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E. W. HOWE 




Travel Letters 

from === 



New Zealand 
Australia 




AND 



Africa 

B r ErW^. H O W^ E 




CRANE 86 COMPANY, TOPEKA. KANSAS 






Copyright 1913 

By Crane fiS, Company 

Topeka 



LC Control Number 



tmp96 025795 



^ 



©CI.Aa5 4 040 



TRAVEL LETTERS 

from 

NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, 
AND AFRICA 



TRAVEL LETTERS 

FROM NEV7 ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 



Saturday, January 4, 1913. — This is written in the 
Pacific ocean, on the ship "Sonoma," two days out of 
Sydney, Australia, where we expect to land next Mon- 
day. We have been on the ship seventeen days, and 
the passengers and servants seem as familiar as people 
with whom we have associated many years. In the 
main, we have had a pleasant voyage, although the 
weather was somewhat boisterous the first few days out 
of San Francisco. We stopped eight hours at Honolulu, 
and five hours at Pago Pago, in the Samoa Islands. 
There was an elaborate celebration on board on Christ- 
mas day, which included a big dinner, speeches, and a 
dance, and we also had a similar New Year celebration, 
although we actually had no New Year's day. At a 
late hour on the 31st of December we crossed the 180th 
meridian, and, when we awoke the following morning, 
the date was January 2, 1913. Ships sailing westward 
drop a day on crossing the 180th meridian, and ships 
going eastward add a day. In traveling toward the 
sun, the day increases in length, and, in a trip around 
the world, this increase amounts to exactly twenty- 
four hours. Every day we set our watches back from 
twenty to thirty minutes, and when we reach Canton, 

Ohio, on our return, this daily increase in the day's 

(5) 



b TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

length will have amounted to the day we dropped. 
In traveling eastward, you set your watch forward 
every day, and, on completion of your journey around 
the world, you will have gained a day. . . . Few 
young people travel ; only the old or middle-aged seem 
able to afford it, while only the young are able to enjoy 
it. Adelaide, my niece, is the only youngster on the 
ship, and, although she never saw the sea until this trip, 
she is thoroughly enjoying it. She was ill in a quiet, 
ladylike way two or three days, but now she has for- 
gotten all about the motion, and dreads to leave the 
"Sonoma" at Sydney. The stewardess calls her "dear," 
but invariably refers to me as "Mr. Works." I am 
trying to get even by inventing a new name for the 
stewardess every time I speak to her. Her name is 
Mrs. Coombs, but I began by calling her Mrs. Ashton, 
and followed it with Mrs. BuUard, Mrs. Comstock, Mrs. 
Davis, Mrs. Everett, and on down the alphabet until 
I now call her Mrs. Wheeler. James, the room steward, 
and George, our dining-room steward, know my name, 
but to the stewardess I am always Mr. Works. She 
is an American, but most of the crew are English, or 
Australians, outside the captain and his chief officers. 
It is ship gossip that the first officer is a very able man, 
but so ill-natured that he has never been given a ship, 
although an older man than the captain. It is im- 
portant to understand your trade, but if you hope to 
get into fast company, you must also be polite. 
cjg ejj c^ 
Among the passengers is a life insurance man named 
Adams, en route to Australia to protest because of un- 
friendly legislation. His wife has been seasick almost 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 7 

continuously, and the women say he keeps her sick be- 
cause of too much kindness : that the moment she gets 
a little better, he stuffs her with unsuitable food, and 
thus brings on another spell. He has heard somewhere 
that champagne is good for seasickness, and keeps her 
full half the time. But however mistaken he may be 
in his treatment, he is certainly an attentive husband, 
and the men are proud of him. It is a beautiful sight 
to see this good husband modestly taking the air on 
deck, after devoting hours to his sick wife. His duty 
is to his wife, and he does not seem to care for other 
people. The women take turns in going down to sit 
with his wife. It was Adelaide's turn this afternoon, 
and the good husband walked awhile with me on deck. 
He says that a good many years ago there was a de- 
mand from total abstainers that they be given a better 
life-insurance rate than smokers and patrons of bar- 
rooms. The rate was granted, but, after long experi- 
ence, the experts of the Equitable and Mutual life 
companies found that the death rate among total ab- 
stainers was slightly greater than the average death 
rate among all classes. 

cjj ejj pjj 
Another interesting passenger as far as Honolulu 
was the manager of a sugar plantation who receives 
$18,000 a year salary. He spent several years in Porto 
Rico and in the Hawaiian Islands, but is now opening 
a plantation in Mexico. He frequently has two thou- 
sand employees, and, as they are constantly scheming 
to get the best of him, he delights in scheming to get 
the best of them. He told me he had been marked for 
assassination several times, but had always heard of 



8 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

it. He finds that when any body of men engage in a 
disreputable transaction, several of them are always 
anxious to turn informers, and secure a reward. An 
informer nearly always asks a thousand dollars, but he 
will usually compromise, and take two hundred. If 
you engage in any kind of dirty work, remember that 
some one will know about it, and sell you out. . . . The 
sugar man says that reliable Mexicans tell him that 
during the thirty-two years Diaz was president of 
Mexico, he ordered forty thousand men shot, and that 
he didn't make a mistake in a single case. 
cia c^ t<ij 
The "Sonoma" is a ten-thousand-ton ship, and has 
been in the Australian trade only a few months since 
it was rebuilt last winter. It ran between San Fran- 
cisco and Sydney several years ago, but the owners 
claimed the business did not pay, so the three ships 
in the line lay in San Francisco bay a long time. Then 
the owners decided to try it again, and the ships were 
rebuilt, and fitted with oil-burners. This is the fifth 
voyage of the "Sonoma" since the owners changed their 
minds. A good deal of the trade has been lost, and the 
employees are very polite, with a view of recovering 
the lost business. We have enough fuel oil on board 
to run the ship to Sydney and back to Honolulu. We 
all like the ship, except that it is a great roller. The 
other night, while the passengers were at dinner, a big 
roll sent the dishes and food into heaps on the floor, 
and those on deck were shot against the rail with great 
force. t<;>j c^ t$j 

Captain Trask is a very pleasant man, and most of 
the passengers know him. Some captains, particu- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 9 

larly those on the Atlantic, see very little of the pas- 
sengers, but on the Pacific, captains have little to do, 
and are more genial. On the Atlantic, there is always 
something for captains to do. Ships are seen fre- 
quently, and if it isn't ships, it is fog. But the Pacific 
is very lonely ; a ship is rarely seen here, although we 
have seen one on this voyage: the "Ventura," the 
sister ship of the "Sonoma." We met the "Ventura" 
on Christmas day, two days out of Honolulu, but it went 
by like a race-horse, and we saw little of it. . . . Ade- 
laide sits on Captain Trask's left, a lady with a maid 
having secured the coveted place on his right. He 
likes to talk, and we are already in possession of many 
of his reminiscences. He learned his trade as most 
Americans do — from the ground up, and went to sea 
as a common sailor when fifteen years old. By degrees 
he learned the technical side of his trade, and has been 
around the world many times in sailing ships. He is 
a big fellow, and I imagine he has quelled many a 
mutiny with his fists. Occasionally, early in the morn- 
ing, I catch him punching the bag on deck, and no 
other man on board is equally expert at it. Not long 
ago, the crew of the "Sonoma" mutinied at Sydney, 
in trying to enforce some rule of the union, and he 
landed sixty-two of them in jail. He took the ship 
back to San Francisco with a new and inexperienced 
crew, and reached port on time. He is very good- 
natured now, but I imagine that, on occasion, he would 
be real rough, and I shall behave myself while on 
board. . . . Poets love to use the expression, "As 
true as the needle to the pole," but Captain Trask says 
the needle is not true to the pole, and does not point 



10 TRAVEL LETTEES FROM 

toward it. It isn't the pole that attracts the needle 
of the compass, but the Magnetic North. A good many 
degrees west of the pole there is a great magnetic 
mountain, and this, and not the pole, attracts the 
needle by which mariners guide their ships. The pole 
has no attraction whatever for the needle of the com- 
pass. c;3 cjj eis 

Stories told by the captain at dinner : In Australia 
there once lived a very rich and very eccentric old 
bachelor. A certain old maid was very anxious to 
capture him, and pursued him so steadily that there 
was considerable talk among the neighbors. On one 
occasion the old bachelor gave a reception at his home, 
and the old maid was one of the guests. During the 
evening, the old bachelor invited the old maid to walk 
on the terrace. She thought he was about to propose. 

"You have a beautiful place here," she said to him, 
as they walked about in the moonlight. 

"Yes," he said, "yet it lacks one thing. But for 
that, I would be a very fortunate and happy man." 

The old maid thought she had him ; that he could 
mean but one thing : the refining influence of a wife. 
N "And what is that?" she asked, coyly. 

"Water," the old bachelor replied. 

Australia is a very dry country, and the average Aus- 
tralian longs for water as you long for money. . . . The 
captain says dogs never do well at sea ; that they soon 
get fits, and die. In order to have good health, a dog 
must have grass to eat. But cats do well at sea. 
When the captain was master of a sailing vessel, he 
owned a cat which made three voyages around the 
world with him. He tells of the smart tricks of this 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 11 

cat as you tell of the smart tricks of your dog. While 
his ship was once tied up at the London docks, the cat 
was prowling around other vessels, and one of them 
carried it three miles away, to another loading-dock. 
The crew mourned the cat as dead, but one day he 
turned up : he had found his way back to the ship 
through three miles of London's streets. . . . The 
captain says there is nothing in the story that rats will 
desert a sinking ship ; he never knew a ship to go down 
that was not full of rats. In the Indian ocean he once 
came across an abandoned ship, and went aboard of 
it. He found the deck covered with rats that had 
starved to death. He tried to burn the ship, as it was 
a menace to navigation, but failed. Six months later, 
two thousand miles away, he ran across the same dan- 
gerous, drifting hulk. This time he succeeded in burn- 
ing it. . . . Captain Trask says that in the old days 
of wooden sailing ships the rats frequently gnawed 
holes in the bottom, in seeking water. They could hear 
the rush of water outside, and, not knowing it was salt 
water, worked toward it. When a ship was known to 
be full of rats, they were watered regularly, to pre- 
vent their sinking it. 

cji cji djj 

Captain Trask says that on one of his voyages in 
a sailing ship, he was in company every day with an- 
other vessel forty-seven days. The ships were of about 
equal size, and bound in the same direction. On an- 
other occasion, he left New York with a cargo of wheat, 
bound for Liverpool. Another sailing ship went out 
of the harbor at the same time, bound also for Liver- 
pool. They did not sight each other during the entire 



12 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

voyage, but arrived at Liverpool at almost the same 
hour. . . . The captain says that after a sailor 
has been ashore a few weeks, he finds the first part of 
a voyage very irksome, but after that he doesn't care ; 
he has spent six weeks beating around Cape Horn 
without minding it much. Frequently a bad wind 
will undo all that has been accomplished in weeks of 
hard work. But that is part of the game, and sailors 
usually take it philosophically. . . . But a story 
is told of one captain who fought two months to round 
Cape Horn, where the current and the wind flow in a 
southeasterly direction three hundred days of the year. 
He was finally compelled to put back to Buenos Aires 
for provisions. Again he struggled for two months 
without rounding the cape, and again he put back to 
Buenos Aires for provisions; but while lying in the 
harbor, he killed himself. Thereupon the first officer 
took command, and rounded the Cape without the loss 
of an unnecessary'" day, the wind and current being 
favorable for the first time in months. 
t$j t<;a ejj 
At two o'clock one afternoon, Old Neptune came 
aboard the "Sonoma," the ship having crossed the 
equator early in the morning. Neptune was dressed 
in a fantastic way, and followed by a numerous train, 
including his wife, several policemen, a physician, a 
barber, etc. A recorder read a long proclamation, and 
the passengers took pictures. It had been rumored 
that all those who had not crossed the line before, and 
could not produce a certificate showing they had been 
across, would be shaved with a wooden razor, and 
ducked in the swimming-tank. There was a good deal 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 13 

of nervousness among the passengers, but it turned 
out that the ceremony only referred to new members 
of the crew. About a dozen of these were operated on, 
greatly to the amusement of the passengers gathered 
on the upper deck. A platform had been erected be- 
side the swimming-tank, and the victims were seated 
on this, one by one. First they were examined by the 
doctor, and given a huge pill. Then they were lathered 
with a paste made of flour and water, and shaved with 
a huge wooden razor. This being completed, the vic- 
tim was thrown into the tank, and ducked. Some- 
times the victim fought, and this caused great amuse- 
ment. One of the passengers, a young athlete, went 
through the ceremony, to amuse his friends, and he 
pulled the barber into the tank. This angered the 
barber, and he began a rough tussle with the passen- 
ger. The passenger was getting the best of it, when 
another member of the crew went to the barber's 
assistance. A friend of the passenger, who had been 
perched in the rigging, watching the exercises, climbed 
down hurriedly, and was preparing to go to his friend's 
assistance, when a word from the captain stopped the 
row ; but for a time it looked as though there might be 
a fight between passengers and crew. A young mem- 
ber of the crew who was being shaved, became gay, 
and also pushed the barber into the tank. There was 
a shout of merriment, and when the young fellow was 
chased and brought back to the platform, he con- 
tinued his joke, and pushed the doctor in. This caused 
the barber to strike the young fellow, which brought 
forth a round of hissing from the passengers looking 
on. Altogether, the affair was pretty rough, but every- 



14 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

thing soon calmed down, and Neptune and his lady, 
and the doctor, and the barber and his assistant, and 
the policemen, marched around the deck and took up a 
collection. A collection was also taken up by a passen- 
ger for the twelve new members of the crew who had 
been ducked. Neptune was represented by a tall 
young fellow we had seen scrubbing the decks every 
morning. He wore a grotesque costume, and repre- 
sented his part very cleverly, as did the others. Soon 
after Neptune and his court had counted the money 
taken in the collection, the big whistle blew for a fire 
drill, and we had quite a busy afternoon. 
c^ c;s t<i3 
We had rather a pleasant Christmas, in spite of hot 
weather. Christmas eve we went to bed in sweltering 
rooms, with electric fans going, and slept without cov- 
ering. At dinner next day we found the dining-room 
prettily decorated. We had turkey with cranberry 
sauce, plum pudding, pumpkin pie, etc. A good deal 
of champagne was ordered, as it costs but $2.75 per 
quart on a ship sailing to a foreign port, as against 
$4.50 at the average restaurant. The captain's health 
having been proposed, he made a speech in which he 
complimented England, America, Santa Claus, and 
the passengers. He also said the ''Sonoma" had been 
talked about unjustly by officers of a rival line. How 
readily rivals in any calling talk about each other! 
. . . While cracking nuts, we began throwing little 
rolls of paper at each other. This soon filled the room 
with colored strips of paper, and the waiters got about 
with difficulty. The captain began the paper-throwing, 
which was accepted as license by the others. While 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 15 

still seated in the dining-room, the second-cabin passen- 
gers passed through the aisles in a procession, the cap- 
tain having given them permission to dance on the 
main deck. They brought a good violinist and piano- 
player with them, and the dancing and music con- 
tinued until midnight. There is a larger company in 
the second cabin than in the first, and they are much 
livelier. One woman, a professional whistler, gave a 
performance, and attracted great applause. She is on 
her way to Australia to fill an engagement. The pianist 
is a young newspaper man from Chicago. . . . 
Maud Powell, possibly the best woman violinist living, 
was a first-cabin passenger to Honolulu, but she did 
no playing, although she w-as agreeable and much liked 
by the passengers. My room is on the upper deck, near 
where the deck piano is located, and early one morning 
Miss Powell's accompanist played awhile ; to exercise 
his fingers a little, I imagine. It was really a remark- 
able performance, and I enjoyed it almost alone. Miss 
Powell was entered on the passenger list as Mrs. Turner, 
her married name, and her husband accompanied her, 
as business manager. 

c;a t$j ejj 
Nearly all the passengers on the ''Sonoma" are old 
travelers. On the Atlantic j^ou meet many people who 
have never been over before, but Australia is out of the 
way, and is usually visited only by old travelers. Sev- 
eral people I have talked wath have been nearly every- 
where, and one man is making his seventh trip around 
the world. . . . We often have three or four rain- 
storms and rainbows in a day. A squall of rain came 



16 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

up this afternoon very suddenly, but in five minutes 
we were admiring the rainbow that accompanied it. 
t<^ t$i t$j 
We have a wonderful country in the United States, 
but we pay very little attention to ships. I heard the 
captain say at dinner today that the United States 
sends only twelve passenger ships to foreign countries, 
the "Sonoma" being one of them, whereas England 
sends eleven thousand. Germany comes next with 
five thousand, and little Japan has five hundred. Our 
decline in shipping began with the Civil War ; we have 
given our attention to building up the country, and neg- 
lected ship-building. The captain says that many of 
our rich men are interested in foreign ship lines, and 
that they impudently maintain a lobby in Washington 
to fight every measure intended to benefit domestic 
shipping. Our financiers will in time gain control of 
many of the big foreign ship companies ; this, in the 
captain's judgment, will be the final solution of the 
problem. ^ ^ ^ 

The Atlantic ocean is small compared with the great 
bulk of the Pacific. Immense fields of water never 
parted by the cut-water of a ship or steamer lie between 
the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. Perhaps 
half of the Pacific is as yet unexplored and uncharted. 
In the lonely South Seas lie the Samoa islands, two of 
which belong to the United States. The "Sonoma" 
stopped at one of these on the 29th, and we found 
the harbor at Pago Pago exceedingly pretty. The 
captain said we should reach Pago Pago at 4 p. m., and 
at 3 : 50 p. m. we went ashore. The "Sonoma" makes 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 17 

its time as accurately as a railroad train. Two hours 
before, the island had been in sight, and long before 
turning into the harbor we skirted the island so closely 
that we could see children waving at us from the shore. 
The island is mountainous, but along the shore were 
many villages of grass-covered houses, and many groves 
of cocoanut trees. The harbor of Pago Pago is com- 
pletely land-locked, and has deep water, but the moun- 
tains surrounding it are very high, and we found the 
weather very warm. As we approached the dock we 
passed the little gunboat ''Princeton," the captain of 
which acts as governor of American Samoa. His crew 
comprises the defensive force, except that fifty natives 
are employed by our government to act as police. 
These men receive a dollar a day, and the sons of the 
most aristocratic native chiefs are anxious to enlist. 
The entire native population of Tutuila and Manua, 
the two islands we control, is seven thousand, whereas 
the total white population is only a hundred. This is 
made up largely of the crew of the ''Princeton." Mail 
is received from home only once a month, and as the 
"Sonoma" was their Christmas boat, you can imagine 
that nearly all of the white population greeted our land- 
ing. Packages of newspapers were thrown out be- 
fore the lines were made fast, and soon there was cheer- 
ing: we brought the news that the naval school at 
Annapolis won the football game from Hartford. 
Mingling with the white men and women of the naval 
establishment were hindreds of natives, who looked 
a good deal like our Indians, except that they were 
better dressed. One swell we saw was barefoot, and 
carried a cane. The officers told us he was the head 



18 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

chief of a village. Sometimes the villages are not half 
a mile apart, but every one has a chief. Three native 
villages were in sight from the deck of the ship when we 
landed. The best building in Pago Pago is the house 
of the governor, which occupies a sightly position on 
top of a hill overlooking the sea and harbor. There 
are perhaps a dozen houses for the ofl&cers and men, 
and these, with a cold storage and electric-light plant, 
coal bunkers, and a small custom-house, make up the 
naval station- In addition to the "Princeton," we 
found two or three smaller boats in the harbor. These 
had come from the other islands after freight and mail 
from, the "Sonoma." The "Dawn" I shall long re- 
member as the dirtiest boat I have ever seen. It runs 
to Apia, fifty miles away. Apia is controlled by the 
Germans, and is much larger than Pago Pago. You 
may recall that a good many years ago several gunboats 
were loafing in Apia harbor when a great storm came up. 
Two gunboats belonging to the United States and two 
belonging to Germany went ashore, and a good many 
sailors were drowned. The incident was one of the big 
sensations at the time. Robert Louis Stevenson is 
^ buried near Apia, and he wrote that the Samoa islands 
furnish the finest climate in the world. . . . We 
spent five hours at Pago Pago, walking about and vis- 
iting with the naval officers and their families. Most 
of them came to the islands on the "Sonoma," and a 
dozen or more of them dined with us. The government 
has built a reservoir in the hills back of the town, and 
water is piped to all of the houses occupied by the offi- 
cers. The naval people were so glad to see us that they 
permitted us to fill the ship's water tanks without 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 19 

charge. There are two or three American girls visit- 
ing married sisters in Pago Pago, and they told us they 
had not tired of the place after an experience of several 
months. All of them came over on the "Sonoma," 
and they hurried on board to see their friend, the cap- 
tain. He dined at the executive mansion. Governor 
Grose's lady had peanut soup, and the captain said it 
was not only new, but very good. She also had fried 
chicken, mashed potatoes, apple salad, and several 
other things the captain could not remember when ques- 
tioned next morning at breakfast, although he spoke 
particularly of home-made butter. The governor owns 
the cow we saw tied on the hillside near the executive 
mansion. . . . Hundreds of the natives were per- 
mitted to come on board the "Sonoma." Usually 
they give a dance on the parade ground, and assess the 
passengers twenty-five cents each, but the day being 
Sunday, the missionaries objected to the usual dance 
being given. However, Adelaide and I saw the dance. 
When we came in from one of our three excursions on 
shore, we found sixty or seventy native women and 
girls in the ladies' saloon of the ship, and they were 
coaxing each other to dance ; it reminded me of a coun- 
try party when the different guests are coaxed to sing. 
Two sailors from the "Princeton" wandered in, and 
one of them was coaxed to play the piano for the danc- 
ing. He played awhile, but as no one danced, he finally 
quit in disgust. Then a native girl, after much giggling 
and coaxing, was persuaded to play, and three or four 
of the girls danced. Two of them were particularly 
good ; so Adelaide and I saw the much-discussed 
Samoan dance, in spite of the missionaries. But we 



20 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

were the only passengers present; the others were 
ashore looking at postal cards. The dance will be 
given at the approaching San Francisco exposition, a 
speculator having arranged already for a Samoan vil- 
lage. I am certain I saw three hundred natives on 
board during our stay at Pago Pago. When I went 
down to the barber shop to get shaved before dinner, 
I found the room packed with native women looking 
at the barber's wares. A ship barber operates a little 
store, and his wares include toilet articles, clothing, 
medicines, confectionery, plug tobacco, etc. I don't 
know that the Samoan women chew plug tobacco, but 
I saw a good many of them smoking. By-the-way, the 
barber on the "Sonoma" was barber on the "Siberia" 
when I went to Japan several years ago. 

^ \<i; ^ 

The afternoon we left Honolulu a new passenger 
came aboard, and I saw him first in the smoking-room. 
He was very plain, and I thought it my duty to be nice 
to him. He was agreeable enough, but not much dis- 
posed to talk. Later I learned that he is- a member of 
the British Parliament, and that he has twenty-eight 
pieces of luggage. He is traveling with a doctor, and 
woman nurse, as he is not well. Ship gossip is to the 
effect that he is a son of Sir John Lister, a noted Eng- 
lishman who has done much in a scientific way. Lis- 
terine was named for Sir John Lister. I do not see 
many talk to the British celebrity, except his doctor. 
His nurse has been seasick ever since coming on board, 
and she cannot be of much use to her employer. The 
man sits almost opposite me at the table, and I am 
satisfied that if anyone should look at him steadily, he 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 21 

would leave the dining-room. He is very plain, and 
knows it, in which respect he is different from Andrew 
Carnegie. He is known as "Mr. Lister," and is going 
to South Africa to hunt lions. At first, the passen- 
gers picked at him a good deal, but during the long voy- 
age to Sydney he became one of the most popular men 
on board, largely because he is quiet and well-behaved. 
^ }<^ ^ 

One of the passengers is an Australian who lived for 
a time in South Africa, and made money in mining. 
Disposing of his holdings to advantage, he went to 
Oregon, and engaged in apple-growing. It is very 
interesting to hear him tell of his experiences. He 
knew nothing about apple-growing when he went to 
Oregon, but "picked up" a practical knowledge of the 
business through experience. One of his " experiences " 
was losing $40,000 in buying a bad orchard. This 
taught him caution, and later he made money. His 
apple-pickers are compelled to wear gloves, and to 
twist rather than pull fruit from the trees. His spe- 
cialty is buying orchards of shiftless owners, and re- 
viving them. I heard him say last night that there 
were two sure ways of making money in the United 
States: the best is apple-growing, and the second is 
sheep-raising. It interested me greatly to hear that 
a man might learn a new business and make a success 
of it in three or four years, as this man did in the apple 
business. . . . Captain Trask has great contempt 
for the modern sailor ; he says any old woman of fifty 
could do the work of a sailor these days, but in the old 
days of sailing ships, seamen were compelled to work 
very hard, and their trade was a difficult one. The 



22 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

sailors on the "Sonoma," almost without exception, 
wear blue overalls, and not the wide pantaloons you 
associate with sailor-men. 

t<j>i i<^ t<j>j 

There is a wireless apparatus on board, and every 
day news of no importance is posted in the companion- 
way. The night before Christmas, when we were 
twenty-four hundred miles out, a good many passen- 
gers sent messages to friends. . . . When you sit 
on your porches at home, on summer evenings, you 
hear locusts in the trees. Old-fashioned colored people 
call them jar-bugs. The wireless, when in operation, 
sounds exactly like a locust buzzing : a good many of 
the passengers have remarked the similarity. There 
are two operators, one of whom is always on duty. 
One of them is a tall young fellow who does great stunts 
in the swimming-pool, and the other looks and talks 
exactly as Lieutenant Rowan did when he carried that 
famous message to Garcia. 

li^ c;>j t$j 

We had an enjoyable time at our New Year cele- 
bration. First there was an elaborate dinner, fol- 
lowed by a concert and dance, participated in by the 
second-cabin passengers. At the conclusion of the 
concert, we all joined hands and sang, "Should Old 
Acquaintance be Forgot?" When the dancing began, 
quadrilles soon became the fashion, and the affair re- 
minded me of "a good time" among neighbors who 
had known each other many years. Most of the talent 
for the concert was furnished by the second cabin, 
although the best two numbers came from first-class 
passengers. Refreshments were passed around, and 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA, 23 

the gayety continued until after midnight. Late in 
the evening, some one tied down the ship's big whistle, 
and the trouble was not located for five minutes. 
Members of the crew also got up a grotesque parade, 
headed by the young man who blows a cornet three 
times a day to announce when meals are ready. Be- 
tween quadrilles, the passengers stood at the rail, and 
looked at the Southern Cross, and found it rather dis- 
appointing ; near it is a false cross which looks rather 
better than the genuine. The Southern Cross is seen 
only in the far South, and down here everything in the 
heavens is new to Northern eyes. Stars are more 
numerous than at home, and the night of the dance 
the heavens were particularly clear, and the sea very 
smooth. Further on, in South Africa, the nights are 
said to be so brilliant that it is possible to read com- 
fortably by moonlight. During the dance and con- 
cert, the first-class passengers became so well ac- 
quainted with those in the second cabin that they 
now go down to visit them, which they are at liberty 
to do, although the second-cabin passengers cannot 
come up on our deck without a special invitation from 
the captain or purser. Once a week the captain dines 
in the second cabin. The food is about the same in 
the two dining-rooms, but our location is amidships, 
while the second is far aft, and the motion is more 
pronounced. The difference in fare is considerable, 
amounting to one-quarter or a third. 
i$j c;3 t$j 
One of the most interesting men on board is J. L. 
Dwyer, secretary of native affairs in American Samoa, 
and chief district judge. He is on his way to Sydney, 



24 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

on a vacation. Judge Dwyer has been in Pago Pago 
five years. When he arrived, he found a king ruhng 
over the island of Manua, but he managed to amicably 
dispose of His Majesty by making him a district judge. 
The king lived in a five-room house, and Judge Dwyer 
says he was a man of intelligence, and ruled justly, but 
he abdicated quietly, and, as district judge, did all he 
could for his people for a salary of $25 a month. The 
king died a year or two ago, but left a daughter, now 
twenty years old, who will be married shortly to a 
white clerk in a store at Pago Pago. The clerk gave 
Judge Dwyer $50 with which to buy a wedding ring 
in Sydney, and the judge says I may help select it. 
I have never before been on equally intimate terms 
with royalty. . . . The Samoan men believe it 
beneath their dignity to be annoyed by anything a 
woman does, so there are almost no quarrels among 
them on account of jealousy. But if a Samoan woman 
becomes jealous of another woman, trouble may be ex- 
pected promptly. . . . The natives have no in- 
come except from the sale of copra, which is the dried 
meat of the cocoanut. Traders formerly robbed them 
unmercifully, so the United States Government now 
attends to the selling of copra, without expense to the 
natives. The income from this source amounts to 
$20 per inhabitant per year. ... In going into 
Pago Pago, we saw a great many churches ; every vil- 
lage seemed to have at least two. Judge Dwyer says 
there are too many churches in the islands. Many 
of the preachers are natives, and much of the money 
obtained from copra is sent away to missionary so- 
cieties, for evangelistic work in other communities. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 25 

Five of our second-cabin passengers were Mormon 
missionaries for Pago Pago. Tlie missionaries are 
thrifty : I was told that every big institution in the 
Hawaiian islands is owned by a descendant of the old 
missionaries. But there is little in the Samoan islands 
to develop ; almost no agricultural land, and the little 
there is (in the vicinity of Apia) is in the hands of 
Chinese. At Pago Pago, all vegetables come from 
San Francisco, 4,400 miles away. A monthly paper 
is printed in Pago Pago, by the government, and dis- 
tributed gratuitously among the natives. One col- 
umn out of eight is devoted to English local news. 
. . . In the two American islands in Samoa there 
are but four vehicles, and these are two-wheel carts. 
There are no agricultural implements, and no farms. 
Wealth is calculated by the number of cocoanut trees 
a man owns. The trees are worth $5 each, and the 
nuts from each tree average about $1 per year in value. 
The waters surrounding the islands produce many food 
fish, but the natives do not much care for them. There 
are a good many pigs of an inferior breed, and some 
of these run wild, and are hunted with dogs. The only 
other game in the island are wild pigeons, though there 
is talk that wild cattle may be found on Tutuila island, 
a story Judge Dwyer does not believe. Every little 
while the natives hunt the wild cattle, but never find 
them. Sugar-cane is grown in Samoa, but is used for 
no other purpose than to thatch the queer circular 
houses of the natives. ... A village chief is 
simply the village mayor, and is elected annually. 
Occasionally the elections are very exciting, and fraud 
freely resorted to, but in the main the Samoans are a 



26 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

peaceful people, and fairly honest. . . . It is im- 
possible to get away from taxes, and the Samoan head 
of a family pays 270 pounds of copra as his annual con- 
tribution to the state. This is all used to pay local 
chiefs, and none of it goes to the United States. . . . 
Communism is practiced by the people, and when a 
man earns $20 a month working as a servant in an Amer- 
ican household, he is compelled to divide with mem- 
bers of his family, but the industrious Samoans are 
tiring of this plan, and resort to all sorts of subterfuges 
to avoid dividing their wages. . . . Pago Pago is 
a beautiful place for naval lieutenants to take their 
brides, and it was delightful to spend five hours in the 
American colony there, but we have no more use for 
it than we have for Guam, or the Philippines. The 
supplies come from San Francisco, and cost a great 
deal ; coal costs $13 a ton for the cruises of the " Prince- 
ton," but our government does not receive ten cents 
a day income from American Samoa. In our career 
of conquest in Samoa, we have not robbed the Samoans ; 
they have robbed us. 

cis cii cis 
At breakfast-time on the morning of December 31, 
we passed Turtle island, of the Fiji group. We could 
see smoke ashore, and that was about all. The 180th 
meridian crosses one of these islands, and the captain 
says a native has a house on the line. In one end of 
his house the day of the week is Thursday, while in the 
other end it is Friday. 

rSp r<ii \<ii 

Most of the passengers are English. Among the 
Americans is a Chicago doctor named Beeson, who 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 27 

greatly interests me. Dr. Beeson has a son who is 
thirty years old, and when the father is away the son 
attends to his business, as the son is also a doctor. 
When the father returns, the son will take a trip. 
Harry Clay Blaney and wife, who toured the country 
for years in a play called "Across the Pacific," are also 
interesting passengers. Mr. Blaney and his brother 
Charles operate theatres in New York, Philadelphia, 
Brooklyn, Jersey City, and in other cities, in addition 
to owning several road shows. Mrs. Blaney is an 
actress, but is very domestic, and spends most of her 
time sitting on deck doing fancy work. 



Sunday, January 5. — We celebrated our approach 
to Sydney, Australia, by running into a storm. I have 
never seen worse weather at sea. Heavy seas con- 
tinually broke over the prow, and at breakfast only 
one woman appeared in the dining-room. It will sur- 
prise you to learn that this lone woman was Adelaide, 
the farmer's daughter. The gentlemen gave her quite 
a reception, but I wasn't there to witness it : I was sick 
in bed. Women are very much more subject to sea- 
sickness than men, as a rule. . . . The night be- 
fore the storm, we had another impromptu dance, and 
Adelaide, who never danced in her life, danced the 
lancers with Judge Dwyer, chief judge of American 
Samoa. There were two sets, and a good-natured 
doctor from London called the figures in an amusing 
way. I hear it frequently remarked that we have a 
very agreeable passenger list; not a disagreeable per- 



28 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

son on the list. At the captain's dinner the captain 
made another speech, in which he threw us gorgeous 
bouquets. 



Monday, January 6. — The captain said we should 
see land on the morning of the 6th, at 8 o'clock. At 
almost exactly that hour, land appeared off the star- 
board beam (I take this to mean off to the right). 
When land first appears at sea, it is very faint, and is 
only distinguished from clouds with difficulty. At 
10 A. M. we were in plain sight of Sydney's famous har- 
bor, and saw other ships entering ahead of us. A half 
an hour later, we took on a pilot, and at 11 o'clock we 
stopped at quarantine to wait for a doctor. When this 
official came, we found him a huge man who would 
create a sensation in a museum. After the usual in- 
spection, the ''Sonoma" steamed toward her dock, 
eight miles away, and we had an opportunity to see the 
harbor. ... In reading, you are almost constantly 
in sight of the statement that Sydney has the finest 
harbor in the world, and, after you have seen it, you 
are disposed to admit the truth of the statement. 
After passing in from the sea, a ship travels eight or 
ten miles to the city docks, and the course winds around 
through hills almost large enough to be called moun- 
tains. On either side are bays, and everywhere on 
top of the hills you see houses with red tile roofs. Syd- 
ney is a city of more than seven hundred thousand, 
and has doubled its population in the past twenty-five 
years. It is only a question of a few years until Syd- 
ney has a million population, and is destined to be- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 29 

come one of the great cities of the world. Its houses 
are nearly all built of a native stone of yellow cast. 
Through this wonderful harbor we steamed slowly, and 
finally landed at noon, as the captain said we would. 



Tuesday, January 7. — This morning we employed 
a messenger boy to show us around Sydney. The boy 
is fourteen years old, and was educated in English 
schools. He talks no other language than English, 
but we could not understand half he said : there is this 
marked difference in American and English pronunci- 
ation. Sydney is an English city, and its signs are in 
English, but we do not understand ma ly of them. 
Australia is not only an English colony, but the people 
of its larger towns have a dialect of their own. Syd- 
ney is a fine city, but looks more like Manchester or 
Liverpool than it looks like London. There are no 
sky-scrapers here, in the American sense ; one of the 
Sydney newspapers wanted to build a sky-scraper, 
and occupy it as an office, but Parliament would not 
permit it. Everywhere you see American goods, and 
signs calling attention to them, and Bud Atkinson's 
American Wild West is giving exhibitions daily m one 
of the parks. It seemed queer to me that an exhibition 
of this character should be granted permission to ex- 
hibit in one of the parks ; imagine an Australian Wild 
West in Central Park in New York. And I do not re- 
call Bud Atkinson as a noted American in the Wild 
West line. This show came over a month ago, in the 
ship ahead of ours. I should say a jump of three weeks 



30 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is a tolerably big one. This is the summer season here, 
and the show will return to the United States in April. 
. . . In the fruit stoies in Sydney you see straw- 
berries, cantaloupes, peaches, green corn, tomatoes, 
etc. At home you hear a good deal about low prices 
in Australia. I only know I paid fifty cents each for 
cantaloupes, which are known as Rock Melons here, 
but they are particularly large and fine. Strawberries 
were fifty cents a quart, but they were extra good. I 
am told that the people here do not care much for Rock 
Melons. The melons we bought we carried to a restau- 
rant, and the woman who served them had never tasted 
melons, and thought we had queer taste. ... A 
thing that attracted our attention in Sydney was an 
unusually large number of young women. At one of 
the bathing beaches I saw a party of twelve, and nine 
of them were young women. We entered Sydney har- 
bor early Monday morning, and the bathing-beaches 
were already crowded ; there seems to be more merry- 
making here than in American cities. On Monday 
and Tuesday the parks were crowded, as were the bath- 
ing-beaches. And the parks here are wonderfully fine, 
g;nd the zoological garden I visited was the best I have 
ever seen. The impudent English sparrows may be 
seen here in great numbers, and in the parks they enter 
the cages of rare birds and rob them of their feed. 
. . . Adelaide is very polite, but she says the people 
here look funny to her ; that it is a constant source of 
amusement to her to walk the streets and see the people. 
She says the women wear afternoon dresses in the morn- 
ing, on the street. Along the docks this morning, we 
came upon a big crowd witnessing the departure of a 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 31 

ship. Half the women wore fancy white dresses, and 
big picture hats. . . . The residences here do not 
seem to be numbered, but each has a name ; a flat with 
four occupants will have four names, and a double 
house will have two. Out in the suburbs, little houses 
of two and three rooms wdll have tremendously big 
names. And we passed through miles of suburbs 
where every house seemed to be new : there is no doubt 
that Sydney is growing rapidly. . . . An attraction 
here at one of the theatres is "Faust," of which Amer- 
ica tired years ago. "Marguerite" is exploited after 
the fashion of "Little Eva" in an "Uncle Tom" show, 
and somehow it looks ridiculous. "Faust" is a ridicu- 
lous play, so far as that goes, and the story of "Mar- 
guerite" foolish. One of the bills now being shown in 
Sydney represents "Marguerite" being transported 
alive into heaven, by angels, in spite of the devil, who 
is flying along with the angels, and snorting fire. . . . 
We hear in the United States that there are no labor 
troubles in Australia; that everything is settled by 
arbitration. But I see much more about labor troubles 
in the Sydney papers than I ever see in the papers of 
America. One of the unions now making trouble is 
that of the Rabbit Trappers. You may think I made 
that up, but I didn't : there is really such a union here, 
and it is just now prominent because of some sort of 
controversy. Many years ago rabbits were imported 
to Australia, to afford sport for the people. Conditions 
are so favorable for rabbits here that they soon became 
a great pest. Farmers are now compelled to fence 
against rabbits, and millions of the animals are caught, 
frozen, and sent to the London market. ... At 



32 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

least one of the leading newspapers here, The Morning 
Telegraph, denounces unionism, saying it was originally 
in the interest of workingmen, but lately it has become 
political despotism, and union labor leaders political 
adventurers. ''Capital/' said The Telegraph, in an 
editorial this morning, ''will leave Australia, and go 
where labor is not a political despot." I do not know 
of a leading paper in the United States that would care 
to print a similar editorial. Plenty of such editorials 
are printed in the United States, but in trade papers, 
and not in leading daily newspapers. 



Wednesday, January 8. — We sailed at noon today 
for Auckland, New Zealand, on the ship "Maheno." 
It is about the size of the "Sonoma;" six thousand 
tons. . . . We are accomplishing so much by law 
now that I suggest the adoption of a law providing that 
no ship of less than twelve thousand tons be permitted 
to carry passengers ; a six-thousand-ton ship is too small. 
Adelaide drew seat No. 13 at the table, but I did worse 
than that : I drew two men in my room. I resent 
two men in my room as I do going to jail, but resent- 
ment did me no good ; the ship is crowded, and I was 
compelled to stand it. But what do you think hap- 
pened to Adelaide, who occupies seat No. 13 at the 
table? She has a room to herself. . . . One of 
the men in my room is a New-Yorker named Bond, 
an importer who has a branch house in Sydney. The 
man with him is one of his traveling salesmen. Mr. 
Bond is an old traveler, and has made this trip many 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 33 

times. He hates the "Maheno," and predicts a dis- 
agreeable experience. He says the "Maheno" can 
kick up a rough sea when the weather is fine, and that 
there is nothing commendable about the boat except 
that it usually gets across in a little less than four days. 
. . . You can never know what it means to be 
crowded until you have been one of three in a steam- 
ship stateroom. It was a disagreeable experience, get- 
ting to bed, which we attempted at 8 : 30, as the weather 
was rough. After I was in bed with my two room- 
mates, I began thinking : ''Suppose one of them should 
snore!" I am a bad sleeper at best, and the thought 
of a snoring man in my room all night set my nerves 
on edge. . . . The opportunity was too good to be 
neglected. Mr. Bond and his friend talked business 
awhile, another thing I am not accustomed to in my 
sleeping-room, and then Mr. Bond began snoring. For 
years, people around me have paid attention to my 
nerves, because I am a bad sleeper, and I resented this 
snoring as a spoilt child does when whipped by a neigh- 
bor. I stood it until midnight, and then I crawled out 
of bed, found a bath-robe and slippers, and spent the 
night on a sofa in the music-room. 



Thursday, January 9. — A ship is no place for an 
early riser. A ship bed becomes unbearable to me by 
5 A. M., and half an hour later I am on deck. I can't 
sit in the music-room or smoking-room, because the 
stewards are cleaning up, and when I walk the decks 
I am in the way of sailors who are washing them with 



34 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

hose. In addition, the early riser never has his shoes 
shined, and gets no early breakfast in bed. On a ship, 
the servants will not respect you if you do anything for 
yourself. . . . The second passenger to appear on 
deck was a woman; possibly she had a snorer in her 
room, too. Much to my surprise, the woman calmly 
proceeded, after seating herself in a deck chair, to put 
on her stockings. They say women always sit on the 
floor when they put on their stockings, but this woman 
didn't. . . . Bare legs are quite common here. 
The fourteen-year-old messenger boy who showed us 
about in Sydney wore stockings only a few inches long, 
and above them his legs were bare to his knees. This 
is the rule with boys and girls, and their legs are sun- 
burned and cracked, and often covered with pimples. 
. . . So far as I know, all the passengers on the 
''Maheno" are Australians or New-Zealanders, except 
ourselves and Mr. Bond, and we expect him to quit 
speaking to us because I do not enjoy his snoring. 
At home I have always had members of my family 
bluffed because of my nervousness, but here everyone 
seems to think it perfectly absurd that snoring should 
disturb me. ... I hear the passengers talking 
about "the bush." In our country we call it the 
"short-grass country;" both mean the frontier. I 
have always been interested in Australia because Abel 
Magwitch made his money there. Charles Dickens 
created this man out of his fancy, but no character was 
ever more real to me. There is something about the 
old fellow that appeals to me as Falstaff or Macbeth 
never did, and to my mind "Great Expectations" is 
the greatest book ever written. Abel Magwitch made 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 35 

his money in Australia in sheep, and at the Sydney 
hotels you see sheep farmers from "the bush" who are 
timidly spending their money. Australia is an ideal 
sheep country, and fortunes are easily made, until there 
is a drouth. Then there is neither water nor grass 
for the animals, and they die off in great numbers. The 
last drouth occurred seven years ago, and thousands of 
sheep sold at a shilling a head. Many of those who 
bought sheep at that price, lost them all, and became 
bankrupt. But sheep are prolific, and in two or three 
years after the drouth they seemed to be as numerous 
as ever. It is said the Australians make money easily, 
and are much like Americans. The New-Zealanders 
are much like the Australians, although the distance 
from Sydney to Auckland is thirteen hundred miles. 
. . . Abel Magwitch was sent to Australia as a con- 
vict from England, as Australia was formerly a penal 
colony, but that was many years ago; Australia is 
now one of the most prosperous countries in the world, 
and it has been of great use to mankind because it has 
tried so many experiments in trying to make the com- 
mon lot easier. Many of the advanced political notions 
in the United States came from Australia and New 
Zealand. The per-capita wealth is higher in those 
countries than in any other; there is more wealth in 
other countries, but it is not so evenly distributed 
among the people as in Australia and New Zealand. 
The government owns most of the public utilities, and 
no one can help remarking the fine system of street 
railway in Sydney. For short distances the fare is 
two cents, and the fare increases after passing certain 
limits. I am told that in some lines of business there 



36 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is a holiday at Christmas here, lasting two weeks. 
There is no severely cold weather, and the people 
are not compelled to spend a great deal for fuel. Wages 
are not as high as with us, but living is cheaper. I had 
heard so much of the low cost of beef in Australia that 
I inquired the price at several markets. The best cuts 
sold at twenty cents per pound : altogether, meat is 
cheaper than in the United States, but the difference 
is not so great as I expected it to be. . . . Every- 
thing indicates that the Australians are good people, 
and hospitable, enterprising, and intelligent ; I have 
only admiration for them, until they begin to talk. 
Then their pronunciation is a reproach to me. I have 
always called it Austraylia; they call it Austrylia. 
"Well, old chap," I heard a man say to a friend in 
Sydney, on parting, "tyke care of yourself!" . . . 
There is a woman on this ship with three little children. 
To look at her, she seems like any other worthy woman : 
devoted, unselfish, kind, polite, and always busy. 
But when you hear her talk, it is different from any- 
thing you ever heard. There are two little girls on 
board, and they are very kind to the mother with three 
children. It is very nice to see them caring for the 
J^aby, and rumiing errands for the tired mother, but 
as soon as they begin to talk they do not seem so much 
like little girls you have known. "I was a bit groggy 
meself yesterday," I heard one of them say to the 
mother. She meant that she was seasick. . . . 
The English themselves do not agree on pronunciations ; 
Cambridge University authorizes one pronunciation 
of many words, and Oxford another. I can understand 
how dialects originate with people speaking the same 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 37 

language, and who do not associate much with each 
other except locally, but the English and American see 
enough of each other to get together in pronunciation. 



Friday, January 10. — Last night I laid my case be- 
fore the chief steward, and he said he would jfix me up ; 
that he would take me out of 27, where Mr. Bond de- 
votes the nights to snoring, and put me in No. 7, with 
Mr. Martin. I went to bed in No. 7, complimenting 
the chief steward for his disposition to please the pas- 
sengers, but in ten minutes Mr. Martin began snoring, 
and I spent the night trying to decide if his snore was 
not rather more rasping than that of Mr. Bond. At a late 
hour I dressed and retreated again to a sofa in the music- 
room. But I have not lost my temper; I am rather 
disposed, on the contrary, to laugh at myself for spend- 
ing a large amount of money in an attempt to have a 
"good time." . . . The sea has been smooth today 
and we are all much more comfortable, although I do 
not believe anyone is getting his money's worth. About 
the only excitement on board is the fact that a flock of 
albatross are following us. I have always understood 
that albatross are rather scarce at sea, but certainly 
twenty are in sight as I write this. They often fly 
within twenty feet of the ship, and we have opportunity 
to examine them carefully. They follow the ship for 
hours without moving a wing; they seem to fly by 
taking advantage of the wind. . . . We saw sev- 
eral whales today, and the captain, at whose table we sit, 
says he once ran into one, and was compelled to back 
out of it. 



38 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Saturday, January 11. — A story one always hears 
on approaching New Zealand : In a strait near the coast 
is a fish known as "Pilot Jack," which escorts every 
ship through, except one. Some years ago a passenger 
on a certain ship fired at the fish, and wounded it. 
The fish disappeared for several months, but finally 
it appeared again, and resumed its old habits of pilot- 
ing ships through the strait ; but it never shows itself 
when the ship appears from the deck of which it was 
fired upon. The shooting incident caused the New 
Zealand ParHament to pass an act protecting "Pilot 
Jack." The fish is about twenty feet long, and photo- 
graphs showing it swimming ahead of ships are common. 
These photographs, it seems to me, are faked, and made 
specially to sell to tourists. Seamen do not know why 
"Pilot Jack" appears whenever a ship invades his 
territory, but certain it is that he does appear, and swims 
ahead of the ship several miles. The captain of the 
"Maheno" says it is possible "Pilot Jack" likes to 
rub his back on the bottom of ships, and thus get rid 
of certain annoying parasites. Another theory is that 
the fish simply plays about the ships, which is not im- 
, probable ; I have myself seen dolphins play in the waves 
thrown up by the prow of a ship, and keep it up several 
minutes at a time. . . . Last night I sent a wireless 
message to the Grand Hotel at Auckland, engaging 
accommodations on my arrival there. I was compelled 
to pay $2 for the service, and sign an agreement that I 
would not ask recovery in case the message was not 
delivered. , . . No one seems to know much about 
the albatross which are following us. A sailor told me 
that if an albatross should light on the water, it couldn't 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 39 

get up again. Ten minutes later, I saw twenty of them 
alight on the water, apparently fight over something 
thrown from the ship, and then get up again. The 
sailors once caught an albatross, and concluded to take 
it to the zoological garden at Sydney, but it became 
seasick, and was such a nuisance that they knocked it 
in the head and threw it overboard. A passenger once 
jumped from the "Sonoma," with a view of committing 
suicide. A number of albatross were following the 
ship and they picked the man's eyes out before a boat 
could reach him. Although very beautiful and grace- 
ful, the bird is said to be a disgusting vulture. Where 
or how it lives no one seems to know ; but it is certain 
that it will follow a ship right and day from Wellington 
to Cape Horn, a trip of three weeks. It is not seen 
when land is in sight ; it seems to sail about the lonely 
ocean as easily as a zephyr, and the stronger the head- 
wind, the easier it sails against it, . . . There is a 
peculiar character on board at whom everyone laughs. 
For awhile I feared he might be a fool American, but 
he turned out to be a New Zealand school teacher. 
He wears a tall hat and clerical clothes, and everyone 
supposed for a time that he was a missionary. One 
day he went after his music, and began singing in the 
ladies' parlor. He cannot sing, and cannot play the 
piano, although he attempts both. A crowd soon 
gathered, and vigorously applauded when he con- 
cluded "The Lost Chord." The howling of a dog, ac- 
companied by a child banging on a piano, would not 
have been worse, and it was so ridiculous that the man 
was asked to sing again. He readily consented, and 
attempted a tenor aria from "The Messiah." The 



40 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

passengers now call the man "the professor," and two 
or three times a day he is asked to sing. He always 
complies promptly. There are half a dozen excellent 
musicians on board, and when they sing or play, ''the 
professor " is plainly bored. He seems more like a char- 
acter from a play or book than a real man, and is mild 
and inoffensive. I talked awhile with him today, and 
found him an educated man, and apparently quite 
intelligent, but he is not able to understand that he 
cannot sing, or play the piano ; he cannot realize that 
all the passengers are making fun of him. I suppose 
all of us are made fun of when we do not know it, but 
the case of "the professor" is more than usually glar- 
ing. , A concert is being arranged for tonight, as this 
is the last day of the voyage, and "the professor" has 
been put on the programme, to avoid hurting his feel- 
ings. Last night he was the only man on board who 
dressed for dinner; he put on a swallow-tailed coat 
much too long for him, and looked odd in other par- 
ticulars. And after all the trouble he went to, in dress- 
ing for dinner, he was compelled to dine at the second 
sitting. He is a small man, with smooth, white face, 
and wears his dark hair quite long. The passengers 
"are learning to like him, for he is evidently a gentleman, 
but none of us can understand why the man so readily 
consents to make a fool of himself. Perhaps the other 
passengers make fools of themselves, too, and are as 
unconscious of it as "the professor." When not play- 
ing or singing, he carries an algebra about, and works 
problems. He has two pairs of spectacles, and is 
constantly changing them, and forgetting in which 
pocket he placed the pair he wishes to use next. . . . 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 41 

I am very proud of the men on this ship, they are so 
modest and well-behaved. I hear no swearing, or rude 
talk, and there is almost no drinking at table or in the 
smoking-room. The three men I have roomed with 
are quiet, and genteel, and I should admire them very 
much did they not snore. I am certain Mr. Martin 
was annoyed because I was put in with him, but he 
is so considerate of me that I can almost forgive his 
bad habit. I think he knows he snores, and when I 
hear him threshing about in his bed, I almost conclude 
he is keeping awake in order that he may not annoy 
me. He is an elderly man, and frequently gets up in 
the night, but he does it so quietly that I rarely hear 
him. ... A man I supposed to be an Episcopal 
rector turns out to be a Presbyterian preacher named 
Thompson. He is an Englishman, but was educated 
at Yale, and now has a charge in a small town in New 
Zealand. I walk the decks with him a good deal. 
He says he has been taking a vacation, and that, dur- 
ing his idleness, he has been thinking a great deal. 

"Many times," he said, "I asked myself the ques- 
tion : ' In view of modernism, what is the best thing 
to do for my people?' and I always came to the con- 
clusion that there is nothing better for any of us than 
fairness, politeness, temperance, and industry ; I could 
come to no other conclusion than that the oldest and 
simplest doctrine is the best." 

Another passenger is a little man who rides running 
horses in races. The Australians are very fond of 
racing, and the favorite riders are noted and prosper- 
ous men. All of them are small ; this man has a wife 
almost twice his size. Some of them become as noted 



42 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

as Nat Goodwin, the actor, and marry as often. A 
little intelligence and coolness at a critical moment 
will often win a race, and the noted jockeys are usually 
men of intelligence. The man showed me a number 
of scars, the result of accidents. In racing in Austra- 
lia, the horses jump hurdles, and often fall. ... At 
3 o'clock this afternoon we passed the "Three Kings," 
barren islands without a light, which have caused many 
shipwrecks. An hour later we sighted the coast of 
New Zealand, and followed it throughout the night. 
, . . This evening we had a concert in the music- 
room, lasting two hours. This is a great country for 
amateur singing ; every traveler seems to carry music, 
and on the slightest provocation will go to his room 
and get it. In addition to singing and piano-playing, 
we had four recitations; the recitation habit seems 
respectable here. ... A New York traveling- 
man says the fashions in New Zealand and Australia 
are always a year or two behind New York, and that 
goods going out of style in the United States are just 
coming in here. Goods that are unsalable in New 
York, because they are out of fashion, may be picked 
up at low prices, and sold here at a good profit, accord- 
ing to the New York traveling-man, who has been 
visiting Australia and New Zealand for fifteen years. 



Sunday, January 12. — At daylight this morning we 
passed into a land-locked gulf, and continued in it all 
the way to Auckland. At 8 o'clock, while at breakfast, 
the suburbs of Auckland began to appear, but we did 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 43 

not get through the custom-house and go ashore until 
two hours later. We hurried to the Grand Hotel, where 
we had ordered rooms by wireless, paying two dollars 
for the service. The manager said he had not received 
the message, therefore had not reserved the rooms. 
While he was talking, he excused himself to attend to a 
telephone call. On his return, he said our wireless 
message had just been telephoned him from the ship. 
That is the service you get from the much-advertised 
wireless. Later I met an officer of the ship on the 
street, and he said I was entitled to a return of my 
money, but I will never get it ; on paying for the serv- 
ice two days ago, I was compelled to sign an agreement 
not to ask for my money back in case no service was 
rendered. . . . The manager of the Grand rec- 
ommended the Royal, which is under the same manage- 
ment. At the Royal we found a woman clerk so polite 
that we liked the place at once. When she called a 
boj'" to show us our rooms, she called him "Buttons." 
This young man took us up in a primitive elevator, 
which stuck, and the servants were compelled to pull 
us out. When we finally reached our rooms, we liked 
them, and probably we are as well off here as we would 
have been at the Grand. . . . All the hotels in 
Auckland, with five unimportant exceptions, are owned 
by a Jew named Ernest Davis. He owns hotels in 
other places, a id they are all compelled to sell Hancock 
beer, as Davis also owns the Hancock brewery. One 
hears a good deal here about the five free hotels of 
Auckland. Freedom in this case means freedom to 
sell any beer the manager chooses to buy. In the 
United States, breweries own saloons, but I have never 



44 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

before heard of breweries owning hotels. . . . The 
Royal is very modest in its charges ; we pay ten shil- 
lings and sixpence per day each for accommodations. 
This means $2.62 a day for room, three regular meals, 
early morning tea, and supper at 10 p. m. And the 
hotel is really good ; I do not care for anything better, 
although the rooms are old-fashioned, and the elevator 
does not work half the time. When you want any- 
thing, you step into the hall and push a button marked 
Maid's Bell. When the maid appears, you order hot 
water for shaving, or whatever it may be you need. 
There are four bath-rooms near my room, which in- 
clude needle and douche baths. The New-Zealanders 
are fond of bathing, and there is never a lack of bath- 
rooms in their hotels. ... I have before referred 
to the fact that women out here wear afternoon and 
evening dresses in the morning ; I believe I would have 
noticed the custom had not Adelaide called my atten- 
tion to it. When the ship landed this morning, a pretty 
woman we admired, dressed in white satin and white 
kid slippers for the occasion. . . . On our way 
up-town, we passed a store labeled the Clobbery. The 
stock seemed to consist of gents' furnishing goods. 
Perhaps an English friend can tell you where the word 
Clobbery comes from ; I never heard of it before. 
. . . After dinner, we walked about the streets of 
Auckland. Adelaide wore what is known at home as 
a "Peter Thompson suit," and it attracted so much 
attention that I asked her to return to the hotel and 
change it. There were great crowds on the streets, 
and they seemed to think Adelaide was a member of a 
lady brass band of which I was director. She took off 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 45 

the "Peter Thompson," and put on a gray suit made 
by a man tailor in Kansas City, but she still looked 
funny to the people, for they continued to stare at her. 
She wore a Panama hat for which I paid $12 (marked 
down from $20), and I thought she looked pretty well, 
but she was a sight to many of the people of Auckland. 
. . . We heard a brass band, and walked that way. 
It turned out to be a Salvation Army band of thirty 
men. The players wore red coats, and played like 
professionals. The men and women in the procession 
were much more decent-looking than members of the 
Salvation Army at home. There were no guitars, and 
no tambourines ; the music was furnished by an ex- 
cellent band of thirty men. It was a very respectable 
outfit in every way, and finally disappeared into a the- 
atre. In Auckland, Sunday theatricals are prohibited, 
and religious services are held in every theatre twice 
on Sunday. In the early evening, while on the streets, 
we encountered the big Salvation Army band again ; 
also, the Mission band. I was told that the Mission 
was much like the Salvation Army, except that it was 
more modest. The Mission had a good band of twenty- 
four men, and a little organ, which two men carried. 
After a selection by the band, there was singing, with 
organ accompaniment. The song was entitled, "Just 
the Same Jesus," and was so simple, and repeated so 
often, that I was soon able to sing it with the others. 
The leader asked for people to give their experiences, 
and a good many stepped into the middle of the ring, 
and talked briefly and modestly. One old fellow was 
a particularly good talker, and said he had been a 
soldier in the Civil War in the United States, and trav- 



46 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

eled all over the world, but had always found Jesus his 
friend in time of trouble. As each speaker ceased, the 
same song was sung, "Just the Same Jesus," and I 
joined with the others in the singing. Presently the 
leader came to me, and said : 

"You are evidently a religious man, and a stranger. 
Won't you make a few remarks?" 

I excused myself, and he then asked the band to 
play. . . . When we walked up the street, in front 
of every theatre we found men announcing special 
religious services. In front of the theatres, also, were 
choirs singing religious songs as the people went in, 
precisely as at a street fair in America, a party of the 
performers will come out to the front to assist the 
ticket-seller in attracting a crowd. The New-Zea- 
landers are evidently a very religious people; I have 
been hearing church bells all day. Everything is 
closed tight except drug stores and restaurants. . . . 
Both bands I have mentioned had only brass instru- 
ments ; no clarinets. In each one I noticed that there 
were cornet players who could play an octave higher 
than the score, and thus get what we used to call "the 
clarinet tone" when I played in brass bands in country 
towns. I have never seen as respectable a Salvation 
Army outfit as I saw in Auckland, and the Mission 
outfit was still better looking. . . . As in Austra- 
lia, January is like July or August in New Zealand; 
snow is unknown about Auckland. All the vegetables 
and fruits are at their best here now, and the bathing- 
beaches are crowded. ... On the "Sonoma" I 
heard the steward say that when anything came from 
New Zealand, it was always the very best. We have 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 47 

found the butter particularly excellent, and the mut- 
ton is better than the turkey. . . . An American 
I met today says that in New Zealand it is no uncom- 
mon thing to see girls of fourteen with complete sets 
of false teeth ; that something in the water here is 
very hard on teeth. 



Monday, January 13. — The meals and rooms at the 
Hotel Royal are so good that we are almost ashamed 
to accept them at $2.62 per day each. The taxi sys- 
tem here is also very agreeable. In most cities, taxis 
are disreputable - looking vehicles you are almost 
ashamed to ride in. Here they are new automobiles 
of different makes, and they cannot be distinguished 
from private vehicles. Today we rode about in a 
Cadillac of 1913 model that had been in service only 
three weeks. The charge was $3.12 per hour. At 
home the Cadillac costs about $2,000 ; here it costs a 
third more. The driver told us he paid forty cents a 
gallon for gasoline (loiown as petrol here) ; we pay 
about eighteen cents a gallon. An exposition will be 
opened here in nine or ten months, and the buildings 
are being erected in a park adjoining the city. We 
went out in the Cadillac to see them, and it was very 
pleasant to hear the sound of the open muffler again, 
for Auckland is a very hilly city. One park we visited 
consists of four hundred acres, and it was given to the 
city by Sir Jolm Logan Campbell. Before he died, 
citizens of Auckland erected a statue in his honor, 
and he was present at the unveiling, which seemed to 



48 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

me rather unusual. From the top of a mountain in this 
park, we could see across New Zealand. The country 
is nearly a thousand miles long, and has an average 
width of one hundred and fifty miles, but at Auckland 
the width is only seven miles. The city will soon extend 
across the isthmus, and there is already talk of digging 
a canal. . . . Auckland is accustomed to giving. 
One of the hadsomest and largest structures here is a 
Y. M. C. A. building, and near it is a Y. W. C. A. 
building. The campaign in which the money was 
raised for these two buildings must have been a stren- 
uous one. . . . Workingmen's clubs are common 
here. I have often wondered that we do not see them 
in the United States. ... A few days ago, the 
New Zealand Press Association, which answers to our 
Associated Press, sent out a telegram which offended 
labor-union men. Thereupon the firemen in an Auck- 
land ferry service went on strike, and greatly incon- 
venienced the public. The firemen had no quarrel 
with their employers, but quit work because their dig- 
nity had been offended by the newspapers. The news- 
papers of Australia and New Zealand criticise the labor 
unions much more freely than do the newspapers of the 
United States. Here business houses are compelled 
by law to close on certain days, and the workingmen 
have become so powerful that they have divided into 
two parties, and are fighting each other. Many New- 
Zealanders have told me that the big fight is yet to 
come, and that this fight will be between the people 
and the labor unions. ... I went into a meat 
market today, and inquired prices. A rib roast of 
beef costs twelve cents a pound ; a sirloin roast, four- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 49 

teen cents. Round steak costs thirteen cents a pound ; 
the butcher told me he rarely sold a sirloin steak, but 
when he does, he gets twenty cents a pound for it. 
Leg of mutton sells for twelve cents a pound, and mut- 
ton chops, thirteen. Pork chops are sixteen cents a 
pound, and ham and bacon twenty-four cents. The 
butcher makes a difference in price when a customer 
has meat delivered and charged. Butchers at home 
do not make this distinction ; the man who pays cash, 
and carries his purchase home, is charged as much as 
the patron who runs an account, and has everything 
delivered. The beef here is inferior to ours ; there is 
no such thing in New Zealand as corn-fed cattle. . . . 
We also visited a dry-goods store, and, so far as Ade- 
laide was able to judge, prices were not much lower 
than at home. Besides, everything seemed out of 
style. ... In Atchison, market gardeners sell 
tomato and cabbage plants growing in boxes. Today 
we saw plants grown in exactly the same way in front 
of Auckland grocery stores, as this is the season for 
making garden here. ... I have never seen bet- 
ter-looking horses anywhere than I see in Auckland. 
They are usually of the Clydesdale strain. All sorts 
of live-stock seem well fed and well bred. . . . This 
is a poor trip, compared with the trip through Japan, 
China, India, etc. There the people dress and look 
different; here the people are so much like those at 
home that we do not seem to have been away, if we can 
forget the pronunciations. ... In the poorer 
quarters of Auckland, we saw a meal advertised for 
twelve cents. It consisted of tea, bread and butter, 
and fish. . . . Anything that sells for a nickel at 



50 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

home, is six cents here. I had my shoes shined at a 
street stand today, and the price was six cents. There 
is no five-cent piece in English currency, but there is a 
six-cent silver piece. There is nothing here answering 
to our ten-cent piece except the sixpence, which is 
worth twelve cents. There are five- and ten-cent 
stores here, but their prices are six and twelve cents. 
. . . When we want a guide, we get a boy from the 
hotel, who is known as ''Buttons." At meal-times, 
his business is to go through the dining-room, and take 
orders for liquor. He also sings in the vested choir 
in the largest Episcopal church in town. We passed 
his church yesterday, and he offered to take us in and 
introduce us to the pastor, but we were compelled to 
decline the honor, owing to lack of time. Wherever I 
go, I employ boy guides. They know the interesting 
places, and point them out, but have no problems to 
discuss as men have. ... A sign we see here fre- 
quently is "Private Bar." What is a private bar? 
Does it mean a bar operated by a man who has a saloon 
for his own private use, and a bartender who waits on 
no one else? ... In the bar connected with the 
Hotel Royal are two girl bartenders, and they are 

good-looking, stylish girls A big store near 

our hotel is operated by "John Court, Limited." That 
word Limited is frequently seen abroad, and seems to 
mean the same thing as "Incorporated" with us. . . . 
At home, we have a saying that oysters are good only 
in the months which have an "r" in them. Here, 
oysters are at their best in April, May, June, July and 
August, and out of season in the months which have 
an "r" in them. . . . In an early walk this morn- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 51 

ing, I saw a man riding a horse, and driving a big bunch 
of sheep and cattle through the streets. He was as- 
sisted by three of the cleverest shepherd dogs I have 
ever seen, and it was a sight well worth seeing. During 
the same walk I ran across a man who was selling rab- 
bits from a cart. He told me the rabbits had been 
trapped the day before, and shipped to Auckland by 
rail. He sold two young rabbits for a shilling, or 
twelve cents each, and called out as he drove along : 
"Wild rabbits; wild rabbits." In Australia, rabbits 
have become so numerous that they are a menace and 
a danger, but this Auckland rabbit-seller told me that 
in New Zealand the supply of rabbits is not equal to 
the demand. . . . New Zealand is not an old 
country; its history really dates from about 1840. 
Although Captain Cook, in 1769, discovered and ex- 
plored the two islands composing New Zealand, its 
real history did not begin until almost a century later, 
when the native Maoris, after a war lasting eleven 
years, concluded a treaty with the English. Austra- 
lia and New Zealand, although nominally English col- 
onies, are as free and independent as any countries in 
the world. 



Tuesday, January 14. — We have devoted this day 
to a railroad journey from Auckland to Rotorua, the 
center of the Lake district. Here are located the gey- 
sers which are said to rival those in Yellowstone Park. 
Here are located, also, famous baths, and Rotorua is 
probably the most noted watering-place in Australasia. 
. . . The railway station in Auckland is located 



52 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

next to the postoffice, and very properly, since the gov- 
ernment owns the railway as well as the postoffice. 
No trains are run at night, as a rule, and none on Sun- 
day, except an important mail train between Auckland 
and Wellington. The railway is a narrow gauge, and 
we traveled on it very comfortably from 10 a. m. until 
6 p. M. At noon, luncheon was served in a dining-car, 
and at 3 : 30 p. m. the dining-car servants announced 
afternoon tea. When we gave our tickets to the con- 
ductor, he said "Thank you ;" over here, when a hotel 
waiter shows you the bill of fare, and you say you will 
take soup, he always says "Thank you." . . . For 
miles and miles we saw nothing but pasture land, and 
cattle and sheep ; a hundred sheep, probably, to ten 
cattle. In a railroad journey of eight hours, we saw 
only half a dozen cultivated fields. These were de- 
voted to oats and turnips. Oats were in the shock, 
and we saw several orchards containing ripe fruit. 
But mainly we saw pastures. The country is beau- 
tiful, and it is prosperous, but its prosperity comes 
mainly from sheep. At several places we saw this sign : 
"Poison laid for dogs." . . . All the stations are 
named for the original Maori settlers, as many of our 
towns have Indian names. At many stations we saw 
the Maoris in considerable numbers. ... I do 
not believe there is a shingle roof in New Zealand ; the 
roofs of the cheaper houses are of corrugated iron while 
the roofs of the better class houses are of red tile. 
Nearly all the houses in the country have fireplaces, 
and most of them are built of sheet-iron. The winters 
here are very mild, and a little fire in a grate is all that 
is needed. New Zealand is a wonderful stock-raising 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 53 

country, because of its mild winters. ... In the 
smoking-car of the train, the spittoons were holes in 
the floor, with a brass top of the regulation spittoon 
pattern. ... In Australia and New Zealand you 
see the sign "No smoking" very much oftener than 
anywhere else in the world. . . . There is no prairie 
land in New Zealand. There is a bush to be cleared 
off all the farm land ; I don't know what it is, but it 
looks like scrub cedar. All along the route we saw this 
burning ; that seems to be one method of clearing land 
here. And after the land is cleared, it must be heavily 
manured ; at one country town I saw a store sign which 
announced dry goods, artificial manures, iron mongery, 
etc. There is as much evidence of prosperity here as 
in the best sections of the Middle West, and you won- 
der where it comes from, since you see almost nothing 
but sheep. I didn't see a poverty-stricken looking 
house all day, nor at any of the dozens of stopping- 
places did I see anyone who seemed to be poor. . . . 
About 2 p. M. we approached the mountains, and trav- 
eled in them until we reached the summit, and ran 
rapidly down the other side. Near the top we en- 
countered several sawmills, but they were rather small 
affairs. At 5 p. m. we began seeing, in the distance, 
steam ascending from geysers. At 6 p. m. we steamed 
into Rotorua. The railroad stops here, and all the 
passengers left the crowded train. There are dozens 
of boarding-houses and hotels ; excellent accommo- 
dations may be had for $10.50 a week, and the Grand, 
the best hotel, charges only $3.12 a day for board and 
room. The baths rival the best in the most famous 
watering-places of the Old World, and many spouting 



54 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

geysers may be seen in an hour's walk. In addition, 
Rotorua has a beautiful lake, and anyone can catch 
fish in it; so, little wonder that the town is growing 
rapidly. 



Wednesday, January 15. — At 10 o'clock this morn- 
ing we left for a trip on the lake. There were about a 
dozen other passengers in the motor boat, and in half 
an hour most of them were seasick, as the wind was 
blowing a gale. Our destination was a famous spring 
eight miles away. This spring heads a river so large 
that we sailed in it in a boat. The water gushes up 
fropa a great hole, and with such force that a coin will 
not sink in it. The flow is twelve million gallons in 
twenty-four hours, and the water as cold as ice. From 
the wonderful spring, we went through a wonderful 
river to a wonderful fall. Three other boats ac- 
companied us ; tourists are as common here as they 
are in Egypt. At the wonderful fall, we ate lunch. 
The Grand Hotel sent a hamper along, and we 
ate while sitting on a cliff overlooking the mighty 
rush of water. At the fall we left the boat, and 
took a stage back to Rotorua, stopping on the 
way at a thermal center of great interest : Tikitere. 
An Irishman married a Maori woman who owns the 
place, and he insists upon charging fifty cents admission. 
This is the only sight in the district for which a charge 
is made ; the Irishman is smarter than the New Zea- 
land government, and every visitor is compelled to pay 
two shillings, or miss one of the best sights in the dis- 
trict. Tikitere covers several acres, and is mainly de- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 55 

voted to boiling mud springs. There are thousands 
of these springs, some of them not much larger than your 
hand, and some of them big enough to float a ship. 
Imagine a loblolly of mud boiling violently, and you 
have the main idea. At one place there are cold and 
hot springs within five feet of each other. Near them 
is a fall of hot water from two boiling lakes. Then we 
drove to Blue Lake, an extinct crater filled with water 
of a perfect blue, and returned to the hotel at 6 p. m., 
badly sunburned as a result of our trip on the lake and 
in the stage-coach. . . . When I tell people I had 
no sleep on the "Maheno" because of snoring gentle- 
men, they say, "Let me tell you what they did to me." 
And then they relate inconveniences suffered on differ- 
ent ships. But in spite of these uncomfortable inci- 
dents of travel, nothing can keep the people at home. 
. . . The stage in which we traveled today was 
pulled by five horses : two wheelers, and three hitched 
side by side ahead of them. The roads were so dusty 
that the driver was frequently compelled to stop, and 
wait until he could see his way. . . . Speaking of 
differences in the English language at home and abroad : 
opposite my room at the Grand Hotel is a livery and 
bait stable. Rotorua is a great place for livery and 
bait stables, owing to the tourist trade. From my 
window early In the morning, I see men and women 
coming from the different bathhouses, Avith towels over 
their arms. Frequently stages drive up in front of 
the hotel, and passengers depart for sights quite dis- 
tant from the town. There are a good many auto- 
mobiles, also, and we shall travel in these quite ex- 
tensively when we leave Rotorua to see the other 



56 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

sights in the district. On an average, there are fifteen 
hundred visitors in Rotorua, and a resident population 
of 2,500. The great watering-places in Europe are 
insignificant compared with this place, because of the 
variety of natural baths procurable here. The govern- 
ment has spent $200,000 on a bathhouse, and sur- 
rounded it with a very beautiful garden in which sweet 
peas are now in bloom. This is also the home of the 
gladioli; I see these flowers everywhere in splendid 
profusion. In the park surrounding the government 
bathhouse are several spouting geysers, steam whistlers, 
sulphur springs, etc. Outside the park grounds may 
be seen many sanitariums, with invalids on the porches. 
There is nothing as effective in restoring health as 
natural hot springs, and the variety is so great here that 
I wonder the visiting population is not much larger than 
fifteen hundred. 



Thursday, January 16. — The Maoris, or native 
inhabitants of New Zealand, look very much like our 
Indians, and have most of their characteristics. They 
are lazy and shiftless, but good fighters, which will be 
, generally recognized as a trait of the North- American 
Indians. At the photograph galleries we see pictures 
of beautiful Maori girls, but none are to be seen in the 
native villages, two of vv^hich are located near Rotorua. 
In both of these are hot springs, and the natives use 
them for cooking, heating their houses, and for bath- 
ing. In the hot springs are placed pots containing 
meat and vegetables, and the springs are then covered 
over with old gunny-sacks until the cooking is complete. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 57 

The women also do their washing in the same way ; 
the clothes are boiled in a hot spring, and then soaped 
and rubbed in a stream of cooler water. While the 
women are washing, their children are bathing in warm 
pools near by. The houses are built over hot springs, 
and in cool weather the warmth is found very agree- 
able. A few feet away from the hot springs may 
be found a geyser in constant eruption, or which 
erupts every ten minutes, every hour, every day, or 
every month. Yesterday all the geysers were going, 
but most of them were quiet today. The district where 
I saw the native village covers many acres, in a de- 
pression between mountains, and is marked by white 
patches which look like old lime-kilns. These white 
patches were made by the geysers ; the water is strongly 
impregnated with lime, and the steam and spray give 
everything touched a coating of white. We saw great 
holes in the earth filled with blue water, and the bot- 
tom as white as snow. Not far away would be found 
another geyser ; a great loblolly of mud, boiling lazily. 
Beside a rushing stream of cold water we saw a hot 
spring, and heard the old story that a man might stand 
in one spot, catch a trout, and boil it. A Maori woman 
was our guide, and we greatly admired her beautiful 
voice. She was elderly, and ugly, but her voice was soft 
and musical. She took us to a native Maori fort, and 
pointed out a sort of bird-box situated on top of a pole. 
This was a Spirit House ; a spirit lived in it, and, when 
danger threatened, the spirit would speak in a loud 
voice, and tell the people what the danger was, and 
when it would appear. 



58 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

"Most ladies and gentlemen do not believe it," the 
Maori woman said. 

I asked her if she believed it, and she replied in her 
broken English : "I used to did." She said that when 
she was a child, her people always put food in the spirit 
house for the spirit, but that lately the custom is going 
out of fashion. In the village are Catholic and Epis- 
copal churches ; the Catholic priest is a native Maori, 
and the church is heated in cool weather from a hot 
spring beneath it. . . . The Maoris were originally 
cannibals, but the guide said they ate each other, and 
did not bother the whites much. In one place we vis- 
ited here, we saw forks made of human bones. . . . 
We called at the guide's home, and saw one of the tin 
fireplaces which are seen in seven-tenths of the poorer 
houses. They cost about $8 put up, and are used for 
cooking purposes, as well as for heating. They burn 
out, after a time, but a tinner will rivet in a patch for a 
small charge. They are certainly very much cheaper 
than the stone and brick fireplaces we have. A native 
Maori village looks much like a negro suburb in an 
American town, but the Maoris are not black; they 
look like Indians and have straight hair. Some of the 
•> women have their lips tattooed, to indicate submission 
to their husbands, but there is a Suffragette movement 
on here, as elsewhere, and the Maori woman who showed 
us about laughed scornfully at the notion that woman 
is inferior to man. . . . Just then we came to a 
place called the Fro'? Pond : a mud lake, and there is 
just enough steam below to cause particles of mud to 
jump like frogs. Near by, in a hole in the earth, the 
escaping steam made a sound like the croaking of frogs. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 59 

The Maori woman described these things, and then 
walked on in silence, with a mean look in her eyes ; 
she was evidently still thinking of the foolish women 
of her race who tattoo their lips to indicate submission 
to their husbands. I didn't have a very good time 
after the woman suffrage question came up, and was 
glad that we soon after reached the last sight on the 
list. When women look at me in that funny way in- 
dicating that I impose on them, I am thoroughly un- 
comfortable. So we walked back to the entrance to 
the geyser field, and took a carriage to Rotorua. On the 
way, we met dozens of other carriages containing visit- 
ors ; here people are always departing for a trip, or 
returning from one, and when the sights are exhausted 
they go on to Wairakei, where there is another collection 
of geysers, hot springs, etc. Between trips, they take 
baths, and there is a great variety to choose from ; no 
other place in the world has as many different baths 
as Rotorua, but the town is not easily reached, and it 
doesn't attract as many people as Hot Springs, Arkan- 
sas, which has only simple hot springs; no chain of 
lakes, no wonderful fishing, no oil baths, no geysers, 
and no mud baths, as has Rotorua. . . . There are 
only two geyser fields in the world ; the other is in 
Yellowstone Park, in the United States. So far as I 
am able to judge, the geysers in Yellowstone Park are 
much finer. There are no terraces here, as in the Yel- 
lowstone, and in every way the Yellowstone district 
seems superior. But in a way, they are much alike. 
The geysers here are undoubtedly losing their force; 
citizens tell me they can see a difference from year to 
year. I have not seen a geyser so far more than ten 



60 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

or twelve feet high, but I saw many big ones in the 
Yellowstone. All the geysers were going yesterday, 
and it is said some of them shot steam and hot water 
into the air to a height of forty feet, but I was on the 
lake trip yesterday, and did not see the big geyser dis- 
play which everyone is talking about today. But in 
the Yellowstone you can see a big geyser display any 
day; indeed. Old Faithful goes off every hour, and 
shoots steam and hot water 150 to 200 feet into the 
air. Here soap is frequently put into the geysers, to 
make them show off for visitors, but this is not necessary 
in the Yellowstone. This district had terraces until 
a few years ago, when they blew up, and now there are 
no others like those in Yellowstone Park. Besides, the 
Yellowstone district is much wilder and grander than 
the Hot Lake district of New Zealand. This is a won- 
derful place, but the Yellowstone is much more won- 
derful, it seems to me. . . . We are the only Amer- 
icans at the hotel, and, except that a St. Paul man was 
here two months ago, we are the only Americans who 
have been here in a long time, the manager says. . . . 
In the fine park surrounding the government bath- 
house, this afternoon, we saw dozens of games going. 
There was bowling, tennis, archery, cricket, and cro- 
quet, but principally bowling. In this game a good 
many elderly men participated; it is an old man's 
game, but lately young men are playing it. The lawn 
was as smooth as a floor, and the game seemed to be 
to roll wooden balls to a goal. The men over here 
carry the wooden balls, when traveling, and engage in 
the game at different places. I had never seen the 
game before, and watched it for an hour. The players 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 61 

were very polite and genteel, but all had the pronunci- 
ation which seems so queer to us. I have seen no golf 
here, but I am rarely out of sight of a tennis court ; 
that seems to be the universal game. . . . The 
New Zealand government has been so successful in bus- 
iness that it is now branching out; it is operating a 
tourist agency in opposition to Thos. Cook & Son, who 
have offices all over the world. People living off the 
main lines of travel cannot realize how valuable trav- 
elers are. In Europe, many cities devote millions of 
dollars to securing tourist travel, and find that it pays. 
Paris spends millions annually in this way, and rival 
cities are lately doing a good deal in the same direction ; 
it is generally said that Berlin is now a rival of Paris 
in attractions for travelers. At this little town of 
Rotorua, a train-load of tourists arrives every day, and 
without them the town would not amount to much. 



Friday, January 17. — In Rotorua, a great deal is 
made of the native women who act as guides. One 
hears of Maggie, the guide, before reaching the town, 
but we did not see her ; she became so famous that an 
Englishman married her, and she is now living un- 
happily in London. But there are many others here, 
for the profession is easily learned ; after one trip 
through the geyser field, I am certain I would be com- 
petent to act as a guide. The native woman who ac- 
companied us pointed out several holes where people 
had fallen in and lost their lives. She says that when 
a man falls in a hot pool, he disappears, and nothing 



62 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is ever seen of him again, except his liver ; in a few 
hours after the man disappears, his liver is seen float- 
ing on the surface, and is recovered. This is the sort 
of information possessed by the guides. A native 
woman fell into one hot crater, and the guides say her 
screaming can still be heard. I listened attentively, 
and the hissing steam made a noise at times which 
sounded something like a woman's scream. ... In 
the warm pools, boys and girls swim together, stark 
naked. The entrance to the geyser field is over a bridge 
spanning a roaring stream, and girls fourteen and fifteen 
years old jurnp from this bridge into the water, if pen- 
nies are thrown as an inducement. The jump is a 
high one, and I saw no boys making it. In one warm 
pool where naked boys and girls were in bathing we 
saw a little white girl, but the guide did not know her, 
and could not explain how she came there. . . Every 
visitor to New Zealand soon remarks that the women 
do not care much about their feet or figures. Still, 
their waists and feet do not seem larger than they 
should be ; perhaps women in other parts of the world 
unnaturally pinch themselves. . . . Tourists do 
all sorts of queer things. One woman who sits at our 
table carries her own tea and teapot, and another car- 
ries her own bread. ... A rumor came to the 
hotel today that the big geysers were spouting, and there 
was hurrying among the guests, but the rumor proved 
only partly true ; the spouting lasted only a few min- 
utes, and the guests of the Grand did not see it. Last 
Wednesday, when we were on the lake trip, the big 
geysers spouted nine hours, breaking all records. A 
bulletin board is displayed in the hotel office, and this 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 63 

is used to keep the guests informed as to the doings of 
the geysers. . . . There seems to be no doubt that 
we look funny. In walking about, we hear people say 
to each other, as we pass, "They are Americans." 
They say it softly, and do not think we hear it, for the 
people here are very polite ; but we do hear it, and we 
remark that people stare at us when they think we 
are not looking. We undoubtedly look odd to them. 
I wonder if our talk sounds as funny to them as theirs 
sounds to us? . . . Wages are not as high here as 
in the United States, but we often hear the statement 
made that this is more than compensated for by the 
lower cost of living. We went into a grocery store 
today, and inquired prices. Potatoes sell at three 
cents a pound ; cabbage, eight cents a head ; green 
peas, thirty-two cents a peck ; sugar, six cents a pound ; 
flour, $3 per hundred pounds; bread, eight cents a 
loaf; crackers, twelve cents a pound; tomatoes and 
peaches, twenty-four cents per two-pound can; eggs, 
forty-two cents per dozen ; butter, twenty-eight cents 
a pound. An inferior watermelon costs seventy-five 
cents ; round steak, eighteen cents a pound ; leg of 
mutton, twelve cents ; loin of mutton, ten. But prices 
are higher here than in the average New Zealand town, 
as not much is produced in this vicinity. The grocer 
said freight rates were extortionate, although the rail- 
road is owned by the government. The apples dis- 
played were from California, but I did not know the 
variety, although the grocer asked me the question. 
. . . You frequently see here tin cans labeled 
"Pratt's benzine ;" but if you examine the label closely, 
you note that it is supplied by the Standard Oil Co., of 



64 TRAVEL LETTERS EROM 

New York. . . Although lake trout are caught 

in great quantities here, it is against the law to sell 
them. We saw a man come in today with as many 
rainbow trout as he and two boys could carry. Lake 
trout are not particularly good fish. Brook trout are 
possibly the best fish in the world, but the lake trout 
are larger, and coarser ; we have seen them here weigh- 
ing twenty-two pounds, but the average is nearer three 
pounds. In one pool at Rotorua, thousands of trout 
may be seen swimming around, and children feed them 
with bread crumbs. . . . Some of the grazing land 
in New Zealand, after it has been cleared, manured, 
and seeded to grass, becomes very valuable. It is 
worth as high as $400 an acre. Choice land is worth 
an equal amount in Australia, but in both Australia 
and New Zealand there is plenty of land that may be 
had for almost nothing ; but it is worth no more than 
is charged for it. . . . It is generally believed that 
the original New-Zealanders, the original Hawaiians, 
and the people living in the islands between, came from 
the same general stock. The language was evidently 
the same at one time, and has been corrupted into dia- 
lects. The native New-Zealanders are exactly like 
our American Indians, in appearance ; perhaps they are 
all of the same original stock. The people of Samoa 
look like the Hawaiians, the Mexicans and the Indians ; 
and the people of the South Sea islands were such ad- 
venturous navigators that the Samoan group is also 
known as the Navigator Islands, and probably many 
centuries ago the islands extended much nearer to the 
mainland of North America than at present. The sur- 
face of the earth is constantly changing ; where lofty 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 65 

mountain ranges once existed, are now vast level plains ; 
our present tropics were once in the frigid zone, and 
many islands that once existed have disappeared. No 
doubt the original inhabitants of North America found 
their way there from the westward, by means which we 
cannot now clearly understand. . . . New Zea- 
land was originally a very poor country ; it had almost 
no animals, and its vegetation was scanty. All the 
sheep, cattle, horses, hogs, fowls, deer, etc., were 
brought here ; when Captain Cook was killed in the 
Hawaiian islands, by natives, he had been distributing 
live-stock in the islands of the South Seas, to benefit 
the inhabitants. Trout are now plentiful in the clear 
and rapid streams of New Zealand, but they were 
brought here. Before the American Revolution there 
were plenty of hogs in Australia, New Zealand, and the 
South Sea islands. The natives traded hogs to the 
sailors for knives, nails, hatchets, etc., and these hogs 
had been introduced by white men, at great expense 
and trouble. The white man has always been trying 
to help his more backward dark-skinned brother. 



Saturday, January 18. — Rotorua, with all its 
charms, becomes very tiresome after a few days. A 
second visit to the geyser fields is like seeing a play a 
second time, and we are impatient to move on. The 
first time you see fifteen-year-old girls, scantily dressed, 
diving for pennies, it is a startling sight, but in a little 
while you do not care for it. When two Maori women 
meet, they rub their foreheads together. That cere- 



66 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

mony interested me for a time, but it does not now, 
and we leave here tomorrow. . . . When we first 
arrived, the manager said : "I will seat you in the din- 
ing-room with an American." The man was exactly 
like an American, but he actually came from Vancou- 
ver, B. C. Canadians are more like Americans than 
any other people. . . . I have not seen such a thing 
as door or window screens in New Zealand. This is 
the middle of summer, and flies are numerous, but no 
attempt is made to keep them out. I dislike to pass 
a meat market, because I always encounter great 
swarms of flies. They have ice here, but do not use 
it much. . . . We visited a moving-picture the- 
atre this afternoon, and it was exactly like the moving- 
picture shows at home ; ridiculous plays of the melo- 
drama order, made in America, and an orchestra con- 
sisting of a piano-player who plays with tremendous 
force. As we came away from the moving-picture 
show we passed the smallest hotel in town, and of 
course it was knoAvn as ''The Palace." ... I 
have never seen such magnificent sweet pea blooms 
as I have seen here, and they are now at their best. 
Roses also seem to do particularly well here, and we 
visited a rose garden today which would have done 
credit to California. There was an acre or more of 
roses, and all the varieties seemed to be different. 
The garden is owned by the government, which does 
all sorts of things over here, and is cared for by con- 
victs. . . . We have had no mail from home in 
five weeks. The people at the American naval sta- 
tion at Pago Pago, Samoa, receive mail only once a 
month, and say they do not mind it ; that mail every 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 67 

day is a daily worry, whereas if you receive mail but 
once a month your worries are greatly reduced. You 
are always expecting important mail which never ar- 
rives, and a daily mail, they say, is really a nuisance. 
. . . One of the baths here is known as a Spout 
bath. You go down into a cave, and water falls on 
you from six feet above. The water comes from one 
of the boiling springs, cooled to an endurable temper- 
ature by the addition of a stream from a cold lake. 
Water is conducted from the lakes in trenches to the 
baths. The water in the Spout bath has a good deal 
of oil in it, and is said to be particularly good for rheu- 
matism. But the worst case of rheumatism I ever saw 
was in front of the Spout bathhouse. A native man 
was so crippled with it that he moved as slowly as a 
snail, and was a pitiful object. . . . There arrived 
at this hotel today a man and wife I had known on the 
"Sonoma." He is a fine old gentleman who lives in a 
country town in Ohio, but he has at least one habit to 
which his wife seriously objects. They sat opposite 
us in the dining-room, and I noticed that the old gentle- 
man parted his hair behind, in the old-fashioned way. 
And it seemed, also, that he used hair oil, for regularly 
three times a day I heard his wife mumbling a protest 
because of this hair-oil habit. And tonight at dinner 
the wife appeared alone, and was seated at our table, 
as the manager knew we were acquaintances. Pres- 
ently the old gentleman appeared; he had been in- 
dulging in his favorite dissipation, hair oil, and his wife 
at once noticed it, and mumbled a protest. The old 
gentleman pays no attention to her ; indeed, he does 
not pay much attention to anyone, as he is a very quiet 



68 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

man. On the "Sonoma" he was an early riser, as I 
was, and usually he barely spoke to me when I ap- 
peared. But I saw him quite animated one morning. 
He was seated on deck, looking out at the sea, and, soon 
after I sat down near him, he burst out into a tirade 
against the farmers with whom he did business as a 
r country merchant thirty or forty years ago. He said 
that in the old day he bought wrapping-twine of farmers, 
and that almost invariably he found a stone in the mid- 
dle of each ball. One conspicuous offender was an old 
Baptist deacon. On one occasion, when this man came 
into the store after sugar, the merchant placed in the 
scoop, with the sugar, a number of stones taken from 
balls of twine purchased of the deacon. The deacon 
watched the performance, but never said a word ; he 
knew he was guilty, and calmly took his medicine. 
. . . I have witnessed many amateur performances, 
but the most amusing one I saw in Rotorua this even- 
ing. It was an entertainment given by native Maoris, 
and the women guides had been selling tickets several 
days. The accompaniments were played on an ac- 
cordion, and twenty-five persons took part in some of 
the numbers. Twelve young girls sang, and among 
them I noticed a number of the fifteen-year-old divers 
who had jumped for my pennies yesterday at the bridge 
marking the entrance to the geyser field. Fourteen 
men gave a war dance, and about that number of 
women gave a "hooche-kooche." The entire perform- 
ance was of this character, and so poor that it was 
amusing. After appearing on the stage, the per- 
formers came down to seats in the audience, as ama- 
teurs do everywhere, and laughed and giggled. Every 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 69 

act was applauded, and every performer had an encore 
number. One of the men who appeared in the war 
dance must have been seventy years old ; rather ven- 
erable, I thought, for an amateur. We stood it for an 
hour, because there was absolutely nothing else to do. 
The English pickle and jam manufacturers, and trades- 
men of every kind, claim notable patrons, therefore I 
was not surprised to find this on the programme : 
"Patronized by Lord Kitchener, Madame Melba, and 
many other distinguished visitors." The performance 
closed with the song, "God Save the King," and a 
dance. The audience was small, and composed en- 
tirely of whites, but out in front of the hall were hun- 
dreds of Maoris lounging about. 



Sunday, January 19. — I write this by the light of a 
tallow candle in a little hotel twenty-four miles from 
Rotorua. We came here today by a circuitous route, 
and saw many wonders on the way. The hotel at 
which I am a guest tonight exists to accommodate 
visitors to the Waiotapu valley geysers, and these I 
shall see tomorrow morning, and proceed to Wairakei, 
twenty-seven miles, by motor in the afternoon. The 
names here are something dreadful ; one place we visited 
yesterday is called Whakarewarewa, but people refer to 
it familiarly as Whak. . . , We left Rotorua at 
8 : 15 this morning, by stage. We had seats with the 
driver, which, in staging, is an honor equal to a seat 
at the captain's table on a ship. We had a pleasant 
drive of three hours through mountains, passing Green 



70 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

and Blue lakes on the way. One lake is really green 
and the other is really blue, and both may be seen at 
the same time from a high place on the stage road. At 
Green lake we encountered a photographer, who, after 
taking our picture, accompanied us down to a buried 
town. While we were looking at these ruins, which 
occupied us possibly half an hour, the photographer 
developed and printed the picture, and took orders 
from certainly ten of the fourteen passengers. . . . 
In 1886 this section was visited by an earthquake. A 
tract of country nineteen miles long was affected, and 
135 people, mostly natives, were killed. After taking 
a look at the town buried in 1886, we drove a mile, 
and embarked on a launch for a ride of eight miles. 
Then we walked over a mountain, and embarked on 
another launch for a ride of six miles across White lake. 
This lake is really a crater, and in spots the water is 
boiling hot. For some reason, the water is nearly as 
white as milk, and in the crumbling walls surrounding 
the lake are hundreds of smoking geysers. The place 
looks like a lake in purgatory, and the country surround- 
ing it is as desolate and barren as can be imagined. 
On this ride we passed the site of the terraces, or mam- 
moth hot springs, which were destroyed by the eruption 
twenty-six years ago. When we landed, we met an- 
other party, going the route we had come, and, as soon 
as we disembarked, they went on board, and left us. 
We found an old guide waiting for us, and started on a 
walk of three miles through a lava-bed. We were al- 
ways in sight of smoking springs and geysers. At one 
place we were compelled to ford a considerable stream, 
and the guide carried the women across. . . . The 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 71 

guide was much the smartest man of his profession we 
have seen. Just how accurate his information is, I 
do not know. He says that most of the great processes 
in geology are carried on by internal fires in the earth, 
and that what we see on the surface here is constantly 
going on, on a very much larger scale, deeper down. 
The water from every cool, limpid spring is sent to the 
surface by the same forces that cause the mud lakes 
to bubble and growl ; the water of every cold spring 
was originally steam, and the water was cleaned of 
impurities on its long journey to the surface. . . . 
The geyser field of New Zealand is more than a hundred 
miles long, and during our journey of twenty-four miles 
today we were rarely out of sight of smoking springs. 
But the most curious thing we have seen is the White 
lake, which occupies a crater caused by the earth- 
quake of 1886. The lake has no outlet, and, until a 
few years ago, was a mud geyser. Then it began to fill 
with hot water from below. In spots the water is 
only warm at the surface, but in many places it is boil- 
ing. . . . The end of our three-mile walk was a 
government rest-house. Here we found a carriage 
awaiting us, and we drove seven miles to the hotel 
where we are spending the night. A storm was threat- 
ening when we arrived at the rest-house, and we were 
anxious to hurry on, but the English people with us 
insisted on having their afternoon tea, and we were 
forced to wait for them. . . . Part of the country 
over which we traveled today looked like the lake 
district of Scotland ; the first lake on which we trav- 
eled reminded me of Loch Katrine, and the stage road 
to it was something like the Trossachs. But after we 



72 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

reached the lake where the water is white, and occupy- 
ing a crater smoking all around the edges, we saw some- 
thing we had never seen the like of before. . . . 
Wild blackberries are a pest in this section. We saw 
hundreds of acres of wild blackberry bushes during 
our drive today, the berries just ripening. The best 
way to get rid of the bushes, the driver said, was to put 
goats among them. . . . This lava district was 
formerly considered worthless. Some years ago a man 
leased fifteen thousand acres of it from the government, 
at a rental of £29 per year, or $145. He burned off 
the bush, sowed a lot of clover seed, and is now getting 
rich from sheep. . . . When I arrived at this hotel 
I was very dirty and dusty, from riding on two stages 
on dusty roads. So I asked the proprietor for a bath. 
He gave me a towel, and called a boy, who led me to a 
creek two hundred yards down the hill. The water 
was warm, and, after warning me not to go above or 
below into very hot water, the boy left me to en- 
joy my swim. . . . On a ship, an American is al- 
ways interested in seeing the English passengers going 
to their morning baths. They are seen in all the halls 
and on all the decks, barefooted, and wearing pajamas. 
But early this morning, at the Grand Hotel in Rotorua, 
I saw a still more unusual sight. An Englishman came 
out of the hotel at 7 : 30 wearing slippers on bare feet, 
and dressed only in pajamas. I supposed he was going 
to one of the hotel bathrooms, but instead of that, he 
walked out on the streets of Rotorua, and calmly pro- 
ceeded to one of the big bathhouses three or four blocks 
away. He was dressed exactly as I represent him; 
bareheaded, and smoking a pipe. . . . While tak- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 73 

ing an early walk this morning, I encountered the court- 
house in Rotorua. Here are some of the signs on the 
office doors: "Stipendiary Magistrate;" "Registrar 
of Old Age Pensions;" "Vaccination Inspector;" 
"Registrar of Deaths, Births and Marriages." The 
office hours of the different officials were : Saturdays, 
10 A. M. to noon; week days, 10 a. m. to 1 p. m., 2 
p. M. to 4 p. M. Counting holidays, that is an average 
of about four hours a day for New Zealand officials. 
. . . At the moving-picture shows here the best 
seats are 36 cents, and a seat on a bench in the ex- 
treme rear of the hall costs 12 cents. ... In a 
Rotorua paper I picked up last night, I saw a statement 
that a man had been fined $125 "for sly grog-selling." 
That is what we call "bootlegging." 



Monday, January 20. — I awoke this morning at 5 
o'clock, and found the sun coming up. You have per- 
haps noted that the sun is not up at 5 a. m. on the 20th 
of January in our part of the world. While the days 
are very warm here, the nights are quite cool ; at 5 a. m. 
I was quite cold in bed, and awoke to look for more 
covering. ... I read myself to sleep last night, 
very comfortably, by the light of a tallow candle. 
Electric lights do not seem to be absolutely necessary 
to the comfort of mankind. ... In riding over 
the mountains here, I find great tracts of flourishing 
pine trees which have been planted by the government. 
Convicts did the work. By this means, the barren 
mountains are being changed into a living green. . . . 



74 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Late last night, a man somewhere about the hotel en- 
gaged in singing; alcoholic singing, I judged. The 
vulgar rich are generously abused, but I have noticed 
that the higher priced the hotel, the more polite the 
guests are. . . . But while this little hotel in the 
mountains of New Zealand is somewhat primitive, I 
prefer it to the best steamship that ever existed. For 
breakfast this morning we had soft-boiled eggs, toast 
and coffee, with mutton chops and bacon offered. 
That is enough for anyone. But on a ship you are 
offered a hundred things you do not want, by pro- 
fessional waiters who are wondering how much of a 
gratuity they can coax out of you. The breakfast this 
morning was served by a girl who, barring her pronun- 
ciation, seemed real nice. She expects no tip; she 
expects her pay from the proprietor, whom I have 
heard her refer to as Mr. Hickey. And while my room 
is small, I at least haven't two snoring gentlemen in 
with me. ... A young gentleman who ate break- 
fast with me has charge of the local postoffice, and says 
there are several big sheep ranches in the vicinity, from 
which he gets a good deal of mail. The sheep here are 
well bred, and not at all like the range sheep of the 
United States. . . . While writing in my room last 
night I felt a shock, and thought some object had fallen 
about the hotel. This morning I learned it was an 
earthquake; we had three shocks during the night. 
Near this place is a place called Earthquake Flat. In 
passing it the stage-drivers rest their teams a few min- 
utes, and give the passengers a chance to experience an 
earthquake shock. Ten minutes never goes by at that 
point without one. At Rotorua, one night we were 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 75 

there, sixty earthquake shocks were noted from 6 p. m. 
to 6 A. M. . . . This morning, in walking through 
the Waiotapu geyser field, we had a satisfactory guide ; 
a native Maori. He didn't say much, and, if we wanted 
to know about anything, asked him about it. Yester- 
day we had a guide who talked incessantly, and he was 
a bore. He was an Englishman, and we were glad to 
get rid of him. Adelaide refused to go out to the gey- 
ser field this morning ; she is tired seeing them, as they 
are all much alike. . . . At 1 p. m. today we left 
Waiotapu for Wairakei, in a seven-passenger Napier 
automobile. The distance is twenty -seven miles, over 
a mountain road, and we ran it in two hours, with the 
usual rests for tea. The roads were good, and the ride 
enjoyable. The Napier is an English six-cylinder car, 
and the driver was very capable and agreeable. . . . 
Arriving at the hotel at Wairakei, we found the most 
gallant man in the world. He runs a hotel consisting 
of a number of detached buildings. In the main one 
he has two toilet-rooms for women, with modern plumb- 
ing, but the men are compelled to content themselves 
with a toilet-room of the country-hotel pattern, located 
out in the yard, near the stables, and it is very filthy, 
and filled with big blue flies. Another law I suggest 
is, that no man be allowed to conduct a hotel until he is 
able to provide proper toilet facilities. The hotel at 
Wairakei is located near a geyser field. Another differ- 
ence between Yellowstone Park and the New Zealand 
geyser country is that in the Yellowstone you find 
modern hotels ; that at the Norris geyser basin is a 
palace. Here, after leaving Rotorua, we found the 
hotels primitive, and not very comfortable. . . . 



76 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

There are many deer in New Zealand ; also wild cattle, 
wild pigs, California quail, pheasants, etc. Several 
times I have seen California quail along the country- 
roads. ... A remarkable thing we saw yesterday 
was a mud volcano ; a small mountain, in the center 
of which was a boiling mud spring. The spring is con- 
stantly throwing out mud, and thus the mountain 
grows steadily in height. . . . To be a Maori, is 
to be a pensioner. The natives employ smart lawyers 
to bring all sorts of claims against the government, and 
these win often enough to be profitable. The lands the 
natives own are uncultivated, and the natives are a 
drawback to the country. All of which is very much 
American Indian. . . . Over here the government 
does everything, including selling tickets to tourists. 
The government owns the town of Rotorua, and brings 
it water and light from waterfalls in the neighboring 
mountains. ... If you are a bad sleeper, do not 
travel. I was awake at 4 o'clock this morning, and 
there was not the slightest noise about the hotel from 
that hour until 7 : 15, when I heard an alarm clock go 
off. You don't know what it is to be really lonesome 
unless you have spent a sleepless night in a strange 
hotel in a strange country. ... A man came in 
this evening from Lake Taupo, with a big catch of 
trout. Some of the fish were very thin in flesh ; so 
thin that they were worthless. It is said fish are so 
plentiful in the lake that there is not enough for them 
to eat. Most of the fish weighed from six to seven 
pounds. . . . We hear of geysers that shoot steam 
and hot water fifteen hundred feet in the air, but we 
have seen no geyser here more than thirty feet high. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 77 

The big sights are always just over when I come along. 
. . . At this hotel, when you wish to take a bath, 
you go out to the manager's office, and find a key hang- 
ing beside the door. This key opens a door down in 
the canyon, back of the hotel. The bath consists of a 
great pool of hot water. There is no roof over the 
pool, but it is fenced in. Within the enclosure, also, 
is a pool of cold water, into which you may plunge after 
a hot bath. Certain hours are devoted to gentlemen, 
and certain hours to ladies. . . . Rooms in this 
hotel are also lighted with candles, and I dislike to 
blow out my candle and go to bed, as I can smell the 
extinguished wick half the night. . . . The food 
in New Zealand is universally good ; we have come to 
the conclusion that the New-Zealanders are famous 
cooks. . . . We find a good many private cars 
touring in this section, as the government devotes much 
attention to roads, which are generally excellent, bar- 
ring the terrible dust. Yesterday we met a little Ford 
machine, and it seemed to be kicking up about as much 
dust as any of them. . . . The rainfall here is 
greater than in the best agricultural sections of the 
United States, but the bulk of the rain falls in winter, 
whereas our moisture is better distributed over the 
growing season. 



Tuesday, January 21. — We have made three trips 
today, looking at the wonders in the Wairakei field; 
we have devoted at least nine hours to sightseeing, 
which is not a bad day's work. One of the wonders is 
the Blow Hole ; a great hole on top of a mountain out of 



78 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

which steam pours constantly, and with a great noise. 
This is called the safety-valve of New Zealand. Sur- 
rounding it we found a number of empty four-gallon 
oil tins ; cans in which old Rockefeller had shipped 
gasoline to this country. The driver of our carriage 
threw these cans into the blow-hole, and the steam shot 
them out again. The noise reminded me of steam 
being blown out of a locomotive boiler, in preparation 
for washing it. There are no hot springs or geysers 
within four or five miles of the Blow Hole ; it is a soli- 
tary attraction, and the steam ascending from it may 
be seen many miles. . . . Although the big ter- 
races were covered up by the earthquake of 1886, we 
have seen two or three small and imperfect ones. As 
you walk through the Wairakei valley you notice that 
the earth is red, and green, and yellow, and white, 
and blue in places. The guide gave me a card on which 
he had made many colors with mud ; it reminded me 
of a painter's color-card. All this is like the Yellow- 
stone, and everything here is much like the geyser fields 
in our greatest national park, but it seems to me that 
the Yellowstone is much superior, in every way. Fa- 
cilities for getting about are much the same, and prices 
about the same, but the hotel accommodations in the 
Yellowstone are undoubtedly better. ... At one 
place in Wairakei valley, steam pours out of a number 
of small holes in the earth. Bottles are placed beside 
the steam holes in such a way that an incessant whis- 
tling is kept up, in half a dozen different keys. At an- 
other place, what sounds like cannonading may be 
heard deep in the earth ; in another, at the bottom of a 
lake, you may hear what sounds like a blacksmith ham- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 79 

mering on an anvil. As you walk along, the earth 
sounds hollow to the tread, and every little while there 
is a cave-in, and a new hot spring or geyser appears. 
. . . I have spoken several times, in a good-natured 
way, of the difference in American and English pronun- 
ciation. A change may not be expected; indeed, I 
think the difference is becoming greater all the time, 
since the English children have a worse pronunciation 
than their parents. We have been traveling several 
days with a father and mother and two young daugh- 
ters. The father and mother joronounce their words 
almost as we do, but both the daughters have a brogue 
that is the most pronounced I have heard. I hope I 
have written good-naturedly of the differences in pro- 
nunciation, for I like the people I meet. Most of the 
travelers are New-Zealanders or Australians, but I can't 
tell them from the English, except that the New-Zea- 
landers and Australians frequently criticise the Eng- 
lish to me. They say, for one thing, that young Eng- 
lishmen who have nothing to do, come over here, and 
set a bad example ; that here, young people are ex- 
pected to work, and are not much respected unless they 
do. Many New-Zealanders have told me that they 
have too many holidays ; too many amusements. . . . 
I hear exactly the same talk here of high taxes and 
public extravagance that I hear at home, and I am told 
that politicians are about as mischievous, active and 
troublesome in New Zealand as elsewhere. At home, 
we hear a great deal about the value of the single-tax 
system. New Zealand has that system, and today I 
heard a Wellington lawyer criticising it very severely. 
It is a single tax in theory only, since New Zealand has 



80 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

about as many different forms of taxation as any other 
country. New Zealand has tried more experiments 
than we have, but gets no better results from its laws 
than we get. It is attacking the trusts, just as we are 
doing, and the trusts continue to flourish ; there are 
some things you can't do by law, and New Zealand 
can't accomplish the impossible any more than we can. 
I hear that compulsory arbitration worked for a time, 
as I hear that a week, or month, or year, before I came, 
the geysers shot three hmidred feet in the air ; but it 
is positively known that the country now has as many 
and as ridiculous strikes as any other, and the best 
gej^sers have done only twenty or thirty feet in my 
presence. The New Zealand railroads are primitive 
compared with ours, and their rates higher ; yet they 
have government ownership, which many Americans 
say would solve the railroad problem. New-Zealanders 
do not say their methods are better than ours ; on the 
contrary, they regard the United States with a great 
deal of respect, and know that we are far in the lead. 
New-Zealanders have the same respect for the United 
States that you find in Kansas City for Chicago ; we 
are the Big Boy in the family of nations, and nobody 
seriously disputes it. Some foreigners make fun of us, 
because they are envious, but the New-Zealanders do 
not. . . . Men are about the same everywhere : 
the native who today drove me to see a wonderful 
rapids in a river, said he knew the best fishing- 
hole in the entire stream, and wanted me to remain 
over tomorrow, and go fishing with him. But I do 
not intend to do it; I have no confidence in tips — 
particularly fishing tips. The same native, in show- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 81 

ing us the rapids, pointed out several deep caves along 
the rough path we were compelled to climb, in getting 
the best view of the rapids. 

"Maybe dead man in there," he said, pointing to 
the deepest of the caves. "Stay tomorrow, and we'll 
look." 

But I could not be persuaded by this tempting offer, 
and leave tomorrow for a trip that will keep me busy 
from 6 A. M. until 12 p. m. If anyone is finding fault 
because I am idle, I hope that day's work will satisfy 
them. 



Wednesday, January 22, — Continuing our pleasure 
trip, we started at 6 o'clock this morning, and traveled 
almost continuously until midnight — by stage, boat, 
and railroad train. Our destination was Taumarunui, 
and when we arrived there at midnight, we left an order 
with the hotel clerk to be called at 5 : 30, to catch a 
boat on the celebrated Waunganui river for Pipiriki. 
. . . The first stage of our journey today was by 
coach to Lake Taupo, seven miles. On the way, we 
passed several waterfalls and geysers, but as we had 
been called at 5 o'clock, we were sleepy, and did not 
much enjoy them. At seven o'clock we were at Taupo, 
where we took a boat for a ride of twenty-six miles 
across the lake. There were only five passengers, and 
the pilot read most of the three hours, looking up from 
his book occasionally to see that the boat was going 
right. When we were out an hour, he asked all of us 
if we were going on by stage. We said we were, 
whereupon he produced a little cage containing a 



82 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

pigeon. Writing the figure "5" on a thin piece of 
paper, he fastened this to the bird's leg by means of a 
light wire, and the bird was released. This is the 
means used every day to notify the stage people, eigh- 
teen miles away, how many passengers are coming. 
The bird has been in use two years, and never fails. 
If the boat has a big load of passengers, two or more 
stages are made ready, but the day we crossed, one was 
sufficient. In some islands, a regular carrier-pigeon 
post is maintained, the pilot told me. . . . We 
landed at a little Maori village at 10 a. m., and found a 
five-horse stage waiting for us, the carrier pigeon hav- 
ing delivered the message entrusted to it. We picked 
up several passengers here, and when we started over 
the mountain, the top of which showed patches of snow, 
the coach carried fourteen, including the driver. We 
called at a house in the village and picked up a very 
fat Maori woman, two children, and two men. The 
woman said good-by to all the women and girl children 
in the house by rubbing her forehead against theirs, 
and considerable time was required for this ceremony. 
When we finally started, a light rain was falling, which 
continued until 7 p. m., when we reached the railroad. 
Three passengers had paid extra for seats with the 
driver, and all of them were soaked, while those of us on 
the inside were protected. During the stage ride from 
10 A. M. to 7 p. M., we passed through a wild, moun- 
tainous country, and saw almost no houses. We 
stopped twice to change horses, and both times the 
passengers drank tea in a little hut warmed by a fire 
in one of the tin fireplaces so common here. The tea 
was boiled in the fireplaces by the hostlers of the stage 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 83 

company, and we gave them what we pleased. I drank 
tea four times today : at breakfast, at noon, in the after- 
noon, and at dinner at 7 o'clock. . . . Wherever 
there was a house, the people came out to see the stage 
go by. At two or three places we saw pigs of the Ar- 
kansas razor-back variety ; there is no corn here, and 
pigs do not amount to much. The passengers were all 
New-Zealanders, and they told us they knew we were 
from the United States as soon as they saw us. They 
said they could always tell English and Americans. 
And then we told them we knew they were New-Zea- 
landers, and not English, because we had heard them 
abusing the English. When you see a man who is ex- 
actly like an Englishman, but who abuses the English, 
you may know he is from New Zealand or Australia. 
A woman and her daughter who w^ere passengers told 
us New-Zealanders always admired Americans; par- 
ticularly American women. All the passengers, ex- 
cept the Maoris, were making about the same trip we 
were making, and we had met several of them at differ- 
ent places, and become acquainted. In traveling, it 
is almost allowable to speak to anyone. ... At 
7 o'clock in the evening we reached the railroad at 
Waiora, and waited an hour and twenty minutes for a 
train to Taumarunui. This is the only night train 
operated in New Zealand, and connects its two most 
important cities : Wellington and Auckland. . . . 
It is a universal custom at hotels here, when a servant 
serves you, to say "Thank you." A waiter will hand 
you a bill of fare, and you indicate that you will take 
soup, whereupon the waiter says "Thank you." When 
the waiter brings the soup, you say "Thank you." 



84 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

The people here are much politer to servants than 
Americans. . . . Ten minutes before midnight we 
landed at Taumarunui, which is a switch-engine town ; 
I heard a switch engine puffing in the yards nearly all 
night. A town that has a railroad switch engine is a 
grade above the ordinary electric-light town. . . . 
Soon after we entered the train at Waiora, the conductor 
entered our car, and asked : "Anyone from Waiora?" 
Then those of us who had entered the train at that sta- 
tion, handed him our tickets. In America, railway 
conductors have a way of tagging passengers. I should 
think it would be easy here to steal a ride. Stations 
are not called, and there is no train porter, so when 
we arrived at Taumarunui we were compelled to hunt 
up the conductor and ask him if that was our station. 



Thursday, January 23. — The Waunganui river is 
known as "the Rhine of New Zealand." We journeyed 
down this river eleven hours today, and it was the big 
event of our stay in New Zealand. The Waunganui 
river is a series of rapids, and during the eleven hours 
of the journey we were always in a crooked mountain 
gorge. We saw no farm land, no settlements ; noth- 
ing but wild mountain scenery, and a rapid, roaring 
river sometimes not more than forty feet wide. The 
boat in Avhich we traveled was a very narrow one ; not 
so wide as a street car, but probably sixty feet long, 
and supplied with powerful engines. In going down 
some of the rapids the engines were stopped, and occa- 
sionally reversed. The government has spent a great 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 85 

deal of money in improving the river, and the only 
houses we saw were occupied by river workers. I have 
made a trip down the St. Lawrence, and I think we 
passed through one rapids, which was thought to be 
remarkable ; but today we passed through hundreds. 
And the boats didn't poke along ; they ran like race- 
horses, and every minute missed great rocks by only 
a few feet. Probably no other river trip in the world 
is equal to this one. About 11 a. m. we changed to a 
boat of a little heavier draught, and about noon we 
stopped at a houseboat for lunch. This houseboat is a 
complete hotel, and many people stop there a day or 
two in the journey up or down — usually down, for very 
few people make the slow journey upstream. We had 
forty-six passengers, and this number packed the boat, 
it was so small. I am certain that every five minutes 
during the eleven-hour journey, we passed a waterfall. 
Some of the mountain scenery is really fine, and we 
were twisting and turning all the time. We knew 
seven or eight of the passengers, having met them at 
various places during the present trip. At 6 p. m. 
we reached Pipiriki, which consists of a fine hotel 
perched on top of a mountain. It has electric lights 
and modern conveniences, and is a joy after some of 
the hotels in the geyser district. . . . Although the 
Waunganui is called the Rhine of New Zealand, it is 
not at all like the Rhine of Germany. It is not so 
large, and the country through which it passes is very 
much more rugged. The Rhine is lined with old castles 
and towns, whereas in traveling down the Waunganui 
all day you do not see a single town, and only a few 
cheap houses occupied by river laborers. . . . The 



86 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

boat on which we were passengers had one very handy 
employee. He handled baggage, and also served tea 
in the afternoon. When we stopped for lunch at the 
houseboat he assisted in waiting on the tables, and when 
we reached the hotel at Pipiriki he helped wait on the 
tables. He also assisted with the ropes when the boat 
landed, which it did a few times, to throw mail out on 
the bank where there was no town, no houses, and no 
people in sight. It also delivered a little freight in the 
same way, and one passenger landed at a lonely place 
and disappeared in the bush. 



Friday, January 24. — We were aroused at 4 : 30 this 
morning, and departed at 5 : 30 to complete the jour- 
ney down the river to the railroad and the sea. The 
lower portion of the Waunganui is as interesting as the 
upper ; although we rode in a larger boat, there were 
as many rapids today as yesterday — the road was cov- 
ered, but the pilot was compelled to follow it as closely 
as a chauffeur follows an automobile road. One rapids 
was so narrow and crooked that the only way to get 
through was to trust to luck, and bump through. The 
captain was the pilot in all the critical places, but at 
least three other men seemed to know the river, and 
took turns at the wheel. One of them was a Maori 
dude, with fancy clothes, and every native along the 
way waved at him. The pilot was also the engineer ; 
the men down below had nothing to do but keep up 
steam. Beside the pilot was a throttle whereby he 
shut off steam, reversed, went half speed, or full speed ; 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 87 

he did not ring bells for the guidance of an engineer be- 
low, but had complete control of the power himself. 
I never before saw a steamboat so rigged. . . . Two 
or three hours after leaving Pipiriki, we began to see 
evidences of civilization; including a cemetery. For 
several days we had been in the wilds where a cemetery 
was not seen. The river still ran through mountains, 
but we stopped frequently, and took on mail and pas- 
sengers. At some places the boat ran its nose into the 
bank for a moment, a deck hand jumped to the shore 
and grabbed a mail sack hanging on a stick, and then 
we backed into the stream. At other places we stopped 
at villages, and took on wool, fruit, passengers, and 
sheep-dogs. A good sheep-dog is worth $50 in New 
Zealand. At some of these places passengers on the 
boat would call out to men ashore and ask them : "Got 
your wool out yet? " At one lonely place several native 
women came aboard, and they said good-by to dozens 
of women at the landing in the peculiar Maori way. 
When we pulled out we saw those on shore riding up 
the hills, on horseback, followed by a lot of dogs. 
There were many native passengers, and they occupied 
one section of the boat; whether this was a sort of 
"Jim Crow" arrangement, or whether the natives pre- 
ferred being together, I do not know. At breakfast I 
did not see any of the natives at the tables. . . . 
We passed a boat coming up, and our captain called out 
to the pilot: "Water twenty-one, Jake; look out for 
Wintoni shoal." We passed the boat on the left, in- 
stead of on the right, which is the custom with all 
traffic here. It was cold on the river early in the 
morning, and we hugged the smokestack, but by ten 



88 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

o'clock the weather was quite warm. . . . There 
were several very small men on board; race-riders. 
They seemed to have been making the tour of the gey- 
ser district, and I judged they were on their way to 
Wellington, where there will be racing next week. Peo- 
ple living in the United States cannot realize how pop- 
ular horse-racing is out here. Nor can they realize 
how popular the tea-drinking habit is. Every rail- 
road train stops at frequent intervals, to afford the 
passengers opportunity to drink tea. At the hotels, 
when the maids bring us tea early in the morning, and 
we do not take it, you cannot imagine how astonished 
they look. , , , Another impressive thing in this 
country is the fact that all the people are very polite. 
I haven't seen a rude person since arriving in New 
Zealand, and, in addition, they are all well-dressed and 
prosperous-looking. I have met one drunken man, but 
he was polite in spite of the load he carried. . . . 
On a boat a few days ago we met a bride and groom, 
and have been traveling with them since. They had 
with them every day a little newspaper, printed in a 
town of which I had never heard, and, as I saw them 
consulting it frequently, I knew it contained their 
wedding notice. I managed to get hold of the paper 
this morning, while they were at breakfast, and read 
the notice. It was the usual thing. A Miss Ruth 
Simpson played the wedding march ; there were flower 
girls, a wedding breakfast, etc. ; the bride was one of 
our most amiable young ladies, and the groom one of 
our most promising young business men; the bride 
threw her bouquet, and it was caught by one of her 
bridesmaids : I greatly enjoyed reading the wedding 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 89 

notice of our friends, whom we had come to know very 
well, and who were very nice. It's the same old thing 
all the world over. . . . At 11 a. m. we passed out 
of the rapids, and the river became broader. At noon 
we came to Waunganui, a town of fourteen thousand. 
Here we took a train for Wellington. The train was 
packed, and I hate a crowd. The farming country 
between Waunganui and Wellington is probably as 
good as there is in New Zealand, which isn't saying 
much. Every three or four miles we saw a field of oats 
or turnips. In between, we saw sheep in hilly pastures. 
There are more sheep here than I ever dreamed of; 
and I doubt if there is a black sheep in New Zealand : 
anyway, I haven't seen one. . . . On the train 
was a father who could take care of a baby, but the 
mother was perfectly helpless with it. . . . The 
dining-car on the train is run by the government, and 
no doubt the waiters take civil-service examinations. 
When we reached the dining-car there was almost 
nothing left, owing to the crowd, but the waiter said 
he could get us a chop. Here, mutton chops are as 
common as bacon or ham in the United States. . . . 
At 7 : 20 p. M. we arrived in Wellington, after passing 
through a number of tunnels, and stopping at many 
seaside resorts. We went to the Grand Hotel, the best 
we have encountered since leaving San Francisco. 
Early tomorrow we shall call on Thos. Cook & Son, 
tourist agents, and see what they desire us to do next. 



90 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Saturday, January 25. — The first thing we do when 
we reach a strange town is to walk around and look 
at it, after being comfortably settled in a hotel. Later, 
we hire a messenger boy, as guide, and go riding. We 
like Wellington better than we liked Auckland, and we 
were in love with that town. The Grand Hotel is 
really excellent, yet the price is only $3.12 a day, which 
includes three regular meals, supper at 9 p. m., early 
morning tea, afternoon tea, and room. The house has 
a good elevator service, electric lights, and plenty of 
baths. My room looks out on the main street of Wel- 
lington, and has a little stone balcony in front. Across 
the street is the barroom of the Empire Hotel, with two 
lady bartenders. I amuse myself watching them. 
They are stylishly dressed, and it is funny to see them 
step up to the bar and ask a man what he will have. 
. . . We swing along the streets in comfortable 
fashion, and hope that drinking tea four times a day 
causes us to look Colonial, if not English, but when 
we step into a store and ask a price, the clerk replies, 
"Ten and six ; that is, two dollars and sixty-two cents." 
Which causes us to realize that our gait, our mamier, our 
clothes and our talk are still plainly marked : ''Amer- 
ican." We went into a dry-goods store this morning, 
and Adelaide bought a pair of gloves. The price was 
three and six (about half the price we would have paid 
at home), and I gave the clerk what I thought was the 
exact change. As I walked out, I was thinking the 
English system of money is easy to learn. When we 
were in the street, a girl came running after us with a 
shilling change. . . . Railroad trains run through 
one of the busiest streets of Wellington, and this morn- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 91 

ing we saw a train start for the races. It consisted 
of half a dozen passenger coaches, and twelve flat cars 
provided with board seats. One of the passenger cars 
was a sleeper. This is the capital of the country. 
Think of the government owning the railways in the 
United States, and, in Washington, D. C, compelling 
the people to ride on flat cars. I imagine that "Tax 
Payer," and "Citizen," to say nothing of "Old Soldier," 
and "Vox Populi," would write stinging letters to the 
newspapers. . . . There is a paper printed here 
called "Truth," and I venture the opinion that it is 
the biggest liar in the Dominion. The last issue has 
a leader entitled "Christ — Caesar — Napoleon." Under 
such a title a writer might lie abominably. ... In 
Australia, a Mr. Beeby was recently elected to the legis- 
lative assembly against the wishes of the labor unions. 
Mr. Beeby challenged the right of the labor unions to 
order his every political act, and become the keeper 
of his conscience. So he appealed to the people, and 
told the labor men to go to the devil. They made a 
tremendous fight against Mr. Beeby, and said he was 
trying to take bread out of the mouths of starving 
people, etc., although he was really a very fair and 
sensible friend of the working class. The result was 
a surprise ; Mr. Beeby won, although by a small ma- 
jority. The Wellington Times of this morning, speak- 
ing of Mr. Beeby's success, says : 

"There is a good deal of hostility to the labor ele- 
ment, because of its disregard of the best traditions of 
constitutional government." 

It was a fair and square fight between conservative 
people and the labor unions, and the people won. 



92 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

There is a great deal of the same sentiment everywhere 
in New Zealand and Australia ; the people believe the 
labor unions have become more exacting than circum- 
stances warrant, and that some day, somewhere, the 
limit will be reached. . . . This has been a very 
enjoyable day, because there are no sights to see. 
Fortunately Thos. Cook & Son didn't want us to go to 
the South Islands to see the glaciers ; they say we 
haven't time. We have walked about in a leisurely 
way today, and, living far from the sea, the docks at- 
tract us everywhere. This afternoon we engaged in 
conversation with an officer of a ship sailing to London 
by way of South America, and he took us all over it. 
He said sea travel is safer now than ever before, be- 
cause of the "Titanic" disaster; that every seaman 
is more careful. . . . Last night, two bands went 
by the hotel. The players were neatly uniformed, 
and there were at least sixty men in the two organi- 
zations. They were Mission bands ; the Mission is a 
rival of the Salvation Army, but a little quieter in its 
methods. The Salvation Army also has a large band 
here, and both play in the streets every evening. The 
papers give advance notice of the location of the con- 
certs, and large crowds gather to hear the music. The 
bands are very creditable ; nothing amateurish about 
them. . . . The men who work in the slaughter- 
houses here are on strike, and the papers of this morn- 
ing say that the Farmers' Union has adopted resolu- 
tions condemning the slaughter-house employees for 
failure to accept arbitration. ... In this country, 
when a newspaper prints a telegram, it prints the day 
and hour the telegram was received, as a guarantee that 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 93 

it was received by wire. If an editor prints a faked 
telegram, he is liable to fine and imprisonment. The 
idea isn't a bad one. The government has lately 
ordered an investigation of the wireless telegraph busi- 
ness. The people desire to know just what is actually 
being accomplished by wireless. I shall watch the in- 
vestigation with interest ; I should like to know, too. 
. . . Tomatoes are generally sold here at fruit stores. 
Which revives the old conundrum : "Is the tomato a 
fruit or vegetable?" . . . A place in Wellington is 
known as "The American Lounge." It is a soda- 
water place, and this sign appears in the window : 
"Coca-Cola ; something entirely new in New Zealand." 
The soda fountain is a small one-spout affair that a 
suburban grocer in America would not tolerate. . . . 
In one of the suburbs, this afternoon, children followed 
us, as though we were Chinese. "They are American 
people," the children said, apparently not knowing 
that we could understand what they said. An old 
gentleman reprimanded the children, and apologized 
for their conduct. . . . The race track is twenty 
miles from Wellington, as there is not enough level 
land in the vicinity to accommodate a mile track, and 
most of the people are out there this afternoon. We 
were walking in the wholesale district at 3 p. m., and, 
looking in every direction, were able to see only five 
people ; and they were hurrying to the railroad sta- 
tion. Wellington is very hilly, and mountains are 
only a stone's-throw from its main streets. . . . 
Yesterday a man named James Cole brought an action 
against his wife, Fanny, because she failed to properly 
support him. Cole said he was unable to work be- 



94 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

cause of an accident, whereas his wife had a profitable 
fish-supper business. Counsel asked Cole : 

"How high are you able to lift your arm since the 
accident which you say disabled you?" 

Applicant lifted his arm nearly up to his shoulder. 

"How far could you lift it before the accident?" 
counsel for Mrs. Cole asked. 

"Oh, up to here," Mr. Cole replied, holding the arm 
high over his head. Whereupon the magistrate dis- 
missed the case. All of which appears in the Welling- 
ton Times of this morning ; in the local news, and not 
in the joke department. . . . We have a mandolin 
orchestra at this hotel, and the leader is an old gentle- 
man who looks like a member of the Supreme Court of 
the United States whose picture I have often seen, but 
whose name I have forgotten. He plays to the lady 
guests as the first violinist does in a Paris cafe, and is 
altogether a very interesting character. 



Sunday, January 26. — Australia has nothing to 
show tourists except a few caves ; New Zealand has 
the geyser district, and a glacier or two, but there is 
nothing of predominant interest in either country, as 
you will find in Egypt, or India, and in many other 
countries. The natives here are not interesting ; they 
remind you a good deal of country-town negroes in 
the United States, although in a way they are superior 
to the negroes, and superior to our Indians. After 
the Marois have seen the stage, the boat or the railroad 
train go by, they have apparently completed their work 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 95 

for the day. In the old countries, the tourists are in- 
teresting ; but there are few tourists here : we have seen 
only New-Zealanders and Australians out for a holi- 
day. Of brides and grooms we have seen hundreds; 
if a woman never gets another one, she usually gets a 
trip when she is married. We have seen a few English- 
men, but they are usually here looking for opportunity 
to make money, not to spend it, . . . Wherever 
I have seen natives I have detected a peculiar odor. 
An Auckland woman with whom we traveled in the 
mountains, says the odor comes from dried shark-meat, 
which the natives are always eating. . . . Last 
night, while looking out of my window at the lady bar- 
tenders in the Empire Hotel, directly across the street, 
a negro man went by. He is the only negro I have 
seen since leaving home. He was well dressed, and 
seemed to be prosperous. . . . The streets are 
somewhat narrow in Wellington, and the Empire Hotel, 
across the way, greatly interests me; I am more fa- 
miliar with its guests than with the guests of the Grand. 
And as soon as darkness sets in, I can see the lady bar- 
tenders ; the electric lights in the barroom render their 
every act visible. To me it is indescribably funny to 
see a woman working on the inside of a bar. Last 
night a patron gave one of the two a bouquet of flowers, 
and she handled it as gracefully as a society queen. 
. . . In the United States, a hotel or restaurant 
waiter looks almost as tough as a hackdriver, but here 
they are fine-appearing men. Many of them are el- 
derly ; they seem to have spent their lives as waiters. 
The man who waits on us in the dining-room of the 
Grand might be a congressman, so far as looks go, and 



96 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

I have never before known an equally capable man of 
his calling. How the Grand affords it all at three dol- 
lars a day, I cannot understand. The price is 12 and 
6j which appears to be $3.12 in our money, but it is 
really $3, since a shilling is worth only twenty-four 
cents. The Grand is the best hotel in Wellington, and 
probably in the Dominion. Wellington is full of hotels, 
and probably the competition is so strong that the 
Grand is compelled to keep its prices down. . . . 
New Zealand pays a good deal of attention to tourists, 
and the government extensively advertises the hot 
lakes and the glaciers ; it also has a bureau for selling 
travelers tickets, and owns resorts, boat lines, etc. 
But it pays little attention to immigration, as Aus- 
tralia does. Australia does much more for immigrants 
than the United States, giving them cheap fares to the 
country, reduced freight rates, etc., and when they ar- 
rive, special attention is paid them by a government 
department created for that purpose. The United 
States gets more immigrants than any other country, 
without inducements of any kind on the part of the 
government : news of the country paying the best 
wages, and offering the best inducements, will find its 
way everywhere. . . . Wirth's Greatest Show on 
Earth is billed here. One of its stars is Hillary Long, 
''the talk of America," although I do not remember 
to have heard of him there. Another of Wirth's stars 
is Young Buffalo Bill, who competes with Australian 
cowboys in mastering wild horses and cattle. . . . 
The offices of the New Zealand government are housed 
in what is said to be the largest wooden building in the 
world. Wellington has many fine structures of stone, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 97 

but the government buildings were constructed years 
ago, and are mainly of wood. . . . This is as sleepy 
a town on Sunday as I have ever visited. This morn- 
ing we went down to breakfast at 8 : 30, and dined alone. 
At noon, the maid had not yet cleaned up our rooms. 
But it is just as bad across the street, at the Empire 
Hotel, into the rooms of which I can look. The beds 
were not made there at noon, either ; indeed, in one 
room a man was still in bed. The lady bartenders at 
the Empire are not on duty today ; the blinds are down 
in the bar, and the lady bartenders are probably pat- 
ronizing some of the numerous excursions we saw ad- 
vertised in the morning papers. The day is not only 
Sunday, but rain began falling in the afternoon, and 
we had no other amusement than watching the bored 
guests at the Empire. . . . The maid came in at 2 
p. M. to clean up my room, and a fine lot of gossip she 
brought. She saj^s that one of the girls employed in 
the office of the Grand died last night, and that the 
hotel force is demoralized. The girl's body was taken 
to the morgue this morning, and the maid thinks the 
papers will be full of it in the morning. When a man 
dies, it seems to be regular, but when a woman dies 
there is a chance for suspicion, particularly if she has 
been to Sydney three months before on a vacation. 
The maid also says that the lady bartenders at the Em- 
pire, across the street, kiss their customers. Lady 
bartenders, as a class, according to the maid, do not 
stand very high socially, a statement I can easily ac- 
cept. . . . The maid says an American stopped 
at the Grand several months ago, and every time he 
met her, he said: "Go to h — 1." I did not recognize 



98 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

this as an American trait : to tell ladies, without provo- 
cation, to go to h — 1. ... In New Zealand or 
Asutralia (or in England, for that matter) the first 
thing an American notices is the queer pronunciation 
of words by the residents. I have mentioned this be- 
fore, but mention it again because I have just come 
across this statement by Rudyard Kipling : 

"The American I have heard up to the present is a 
tongue as distinct from English as Patagonian." 

From which I imagine that our pronunciations also 
jar on English ears. I believe I can take their own dic- 
tionary, and convince the English that they do not 
obey its rules of pronunciation. There is not the 
slightest authority in any English dictionary for many 
of their pronunciations. The pronunciation of the 
English people is arbitrary; there is no authority for 
much of it, as there is no authority for the cockney 
dialect. At one place on this trip we met two 
old -maid high -school teachers, and they almost 
spoke good English, And this is a rule that may be 
depended upon: the educated English have a better 
pronunciation than the uneducated. The pronunci- 
ation of Americans is nearly always the same, but the 
English do not themselves use the same pronunciations. 
Perhaps it is an intonation or quality of the voice, or an 
inflection, but it is a fact that frequently an American 
understands them with difficulty. For several days 
we traveled with an English barrister, a very polite 
gentleman, and we frequently sat with him at hotel, 
steamboat and dining-car tables. Half the time we 
could not understand him. And he found equal diflEi- 
culty in understanding us, unless we spoke slowly and 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 99 

distinctly. Kipling says the American language has 
nothing in common with English except the auxiliary 
verbs, the name of the Creator, and damn. 



Monday, January 27. — Although New Zealand is 
supposed to be an English colony, there are no English 
soldiers here. A few soldiers are seen in Wellington, 
but they belong to New Zealand regiments. The young 
man who showed us about today is seventeen years old, 
and what we would call an A. D. T. messenger boy. 
But the telegraph business is a government monopoly 
here, and this young man is a government employee. 
There is a mild system of compulsory military service. 
The young man says he belongs to a military company 
of postoffice and telegraph employees, and that they 
drill one hour every week. All young men are com- 
pelled to belong to a similar company, from fourteen 
to twenty-five years of age. They compose a mili- 
tary reserve, and never go into actual camp. New 
Zealand also has a navy, which is about as much of a 
joke as its army. Australia, being larger, has a larger 
establishment, but the system is the same : New Zea- 
land, Australia and Tasmania are exactly alike so far 
as politics, sheep, and labor unions are concerned. 
Tasmania is a little place, but it has mighty questions 
to settle. The Tasmania legislative assembly has been 
in a deadlock several years, and none of the big ques- 
tions could be settled. An election was held recently, 
to break the deadlock ; and again the assembly is a tie. 
Politically, the colonies remind one a little of Cuba, 



100 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

where the political pot boils rather more steadily than 
anywhere else in the world. . . . The real event 
of today has been the arrival of Dr. Beeson, of Chicago, 
with whom we traveled three weeks on the "Sonoma." 
I seem to have known him always ; he is my dearest 
friend, and the meeting apparently pleased him as 
much as it did me. ... In the celebration fol- 
lowing my meeting with Dr. Beeson, we went down 
into the Grand barroom, where we found two bars, 
exactly alike, on opposite sides of a big room. An old 
maid known as Polly served us ; a younger woman 
called 'Arriet presided at the bar across the room. 
Polly was very amiable, and talked to us about our 
trip; I suppose she has been a bartender ever since 
she was eighteen, and attractive, and that was a long 
time ago. It will surprise you to know that she re- 
minded me of a school teacher ; she was as well-be- 
haved as a school teacher, and had a bossy way that 
is always associated in my mind with the school-room. 
The Doctor and I talked of going over to see the lady 
bartenders at the Empire, but Polly coaxed us out of 
the notion. Liquor is sold here almost entirely by 
women; the custom of barmaids is more general in 
ISfew Zealand, I am told, than in England. . . . 
Every morning and evening I buy a newspaper. The 
news is mainly from London, or local ; I have not seen 
a telegram from the United States. Which is not so 
surprising : you might read the American papers a long 
time without seeing a telegram from New Zealand. 
. . . Wellington has a fine street-car system ; con- 
siderably better than St. Joseph, Mo., a city of about 
the same size. One line runs through a tunnel under a 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 101 

mountain to a bathing beach ; another climbs one of 
the great hills, where are located many fine residences. 
There are several short cable lines running up the steep 
mountains. In addition to this means of communi- 
cation, there are many boats running around and across 
the harbor, to bathing beaches and suburbs. Welling- 
ton is as fine a town as St. Joseph, and the suburbs of 
Wellington look better. The streets and roads here 
are superior to those in the Missouri city, and I saw a 
grocery store here today that St. Joseph cannot equal. 
. . . There is a probability of a strike among the 
cab-drivers here. The drivers are demanding that pas- 
sengers handle their own baggage. The city has taken 
a hand, and decided that it is the duty of cab-drivers 
to place the baggage of passengers on their cabs ; where- 
upon the Cab Drivers' Union inquired, in a resolution, 
''Why should not passengers handle their own lug- 
gage?" A district delegate has arrived from Auck- 
land, and last night delivered a fiery speech about the 
starving poor, the insolent rich, the disposition of cap- 
ital to wring the last drop of blood from the people, 
etc., and it will be knoAvn in a day or two whether I 
shall be compelled to carry my own trunks when I go 
to the ship. . . . This town is known as Windy 
Wellington, because the wind blows so steadily. One 
story is that you may always tell a Wellington man, 
wherever he may be : when he turns a street corner, he 
grabs his hat, to keep it from blowing away. Welling- 
ton people also have a story on Sydney ; they say that 
when they visit that city they pin a tag on their coats, 
which reads : "I am much pleased with your harbor." 
Sydney people are very proud of their harbor, and 



102 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Auckland and Wellington are very jealous, as both the 
last named cities have beautiful harbors, though neither 
is as large as that at Sydney. ... A gentleman 
who sits at our table at the hotel lived for six months at 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and thinks it a very fine town. 
He lives in New Zealand now, but Lancaster pleased 
him very much. Chicago scared him; he was there 
one night, and the next morning the papers reported 
six murders. As soon as Dr. Beeson arrived, Chicago 
had a more capable defender, and I withdrew, to enjoy 
the scrimmage. ... Chinese are admitted to New 
Zealand on payment of $1,500 per head, and a good 
many of them run fruit and vegetable stores here. . . . 
As the maid predicted, the Monday morning papers 
mentioned the death at the Grand Hotel Saturday 
night, but they handled the item very cautiously, say- 
ing that the circumstances were suspicious, and that an 
inquest was necessary. . . . No doubt the people 
at the Empire are much exercised ; unless I am much 
mistaken, the people of the Empire are saying : ''That 
rotten outfit across the street is getting what it de- 
serves." You can't expect anyone to be fair with his 
rival in business. 



Tuesday, January 28. — We took a long street-car 
ride this morning, and paid sixteen cents for one jour- 
ney which would have cost only five cents in an Amer- 
ican city. But you can ride a short distance for two 
cents. The fare increases two cents per section. 
Whether our plan of five cents for a street-railway ride, 
long or short, is better or worse than this, I do not know. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 103 

There are no transfers here ; if you travel on three 
different lines, you pay three fares. . . . Every 
morning our waiter at the hotel brings us hot cakes, 
although we do not order them. We discovered the 
reason today : on the bill of fare they are called "hot 
cakes, American style." It is the waiter's way of an- 
nouncing that he knows we are Americans. . . . 
When you order soft-boiled eggs here, they are brought 
to you in the shell, and you eat them out of egg cups. 
This morning I asked the waiter to break mine in a 
glass, which he did, but he also put in pepper and salt, 
and stirred them up. . . . This has been a very 
chilly day, and the Wellington people are going about 
wearing overcoats and straw hats. A woman on the 
street car informed us that today has been as cold as 
the weather ever gets here, at any season. At one of 
the beaches we saw the surf rolling in a very bois- 
terous and menacing way, as the wind was blowing 
almost a gale. But flowers are in bloom, and vege- 
tables growing in gardens. The vegetable gardens here 
are in the hands of Chinese, and are wonderfully neat ; 
almost as wonderful as the gardens about Paris, where 
the gardeners remove the original dirt, and make a new 
soil. . . . We hear complaints everywhere of the 
labor unions. On a street car today we engaged in 
conversation with an elderly woman who said she was 
born in Wellington, and who complained bitterly of 
the unions, which cause constant disturbances in all 
branches of business. This was surprising to me, in 
New Zealand, where we have heard everything is so 
amiable. I hear the same thing every time I talk 
with New Zealand people. ''It is too much of a good 



104 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

thing," they say. Possibly it is like our tariff : originally 
a good thing, it has been overdone, and all of us are 
now compelled to pay tribute in the shape of a heavy 
tax. . . . When we began talking with the woman, 
she said: "I take it that you are Americans." We 
always hear that. . . . We have discovered that 
among its other attractions, the Grand Hotel has a roof 
garden. Even the Chicago doctor is surprised at the 
excellence of the hotel ; and the price is only $3 a day 
each, including meals and rooms. We have concluded 
that the necessities of life, on an average, are about one- 
quarter cheaper here than in the United States. While 
there are no great tracts of farming land in the vicinity 
of Wellington or Auckland, near Christchurch, on the 
other island, there are said to be plains one hundred 
miles long. People here say that mutton is the one 
meat they never tire of ; and mutton is very plentiful 
and very cheap. . . . The New-Zealander who 
sits at our table is a very bold man, to hear him talk. 
I told him of my experience with snoring men, on the 
"Maheno," and he says that under such circumstances 
he would have raised a row with the disturbers. But 
I think that possibly he is like many others I have 
known : a great talker, rather than a great hero. He 
tells an amusing story of a friend he once invited to his 
home for a visit of a fortnight. The friend turned out 
to have the loudest and most disagreeable snore ever 
heard in New Zealand, and no one in the house slept 

during the two weeks the visitor was there 

The tipping evil is not as great in New Zealand as it is 
in many places; the servants here have heard of the 
custom, but they do not mob travelers who fail to fee 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 105 

them satisfactorily. . . , The greatest need at 
present, in all parts of the world, is a library of books of 
simple information, simply written. Today I bought 
a book on Africa, by Sir H. H. Johnston. The intro- 
duction is interesting, but the remaining hundreds of 
pages contain a lot of technical information that no 
one wants. My impression is that Sir H. H. Johnston 
wrote the introduction, and the remaining pages 
were taken from old books on the subject. Cyclo- 
pedias are made in the same way. Some time ago I 
read the confession of a cyclopedia editor. He says 
such books are full of errors, because of the habit of 
copying, and that there is too little independent in- 
vestigation. He relates that as an editor he once in- 
vented a man, a "noted clergyman," and sent a "story" 
about him to the printers. The "story" passed the 
scrutiny of all the other editors, and was about to be 
made up into the pages of the cyclopedia, when the 
joker took it out. That is the way historical books are 
printed; they are too long, very dull, full of errors, 
written in a ponderous style that repels readers, and 
lacking in the simplicity and terseness necessary for the 
understanding of the average reader. There are several 
"libraries" of "universal knowledge," and not one of 
them is half as good, as useful or as entertaining as it 
could have been made. The lack in all these books is 
simplicity ; the professors write in fear of the criticism 
of other professors, and not for busy people. In this 
book on Africa, about all I found of interest was a state- 
ment that the Australoid type of man is almost cer- 
tainly the parent of the white man in Europe and Asia. 
The Australoid, represented at present by the indige- 



106 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

nous population of Australia (a chocolate-colored 
people, rather than black) comes nearest of all living 
men to the basal stock of our race, and behind him lies 
a long vista of semi-humanity till apehood is reached. 
This was a new statement to me. . . . The human 
genus was evolved somewhere in Asia, most probably 
in India, according to the best authority. This was a 
long time ago ; human remains at least five hundred 
thousand years old have been found in the Rhine basin 
near Heidelberg, and it is believed the race is much 
older in Asia. But the original man was a black man, 
or a yellow man ; the white man originated much later, 
and, according to Sir H, H. Johnston, he originated in 
Australia. So I am visiting the home of my remote an- 
cestors. While man is very old, he ceased only twenty- 
five or thirty thousand years ago — this is only a guess 
of scientists, but the best information we have — to live 
in an absolutely savage condition as a mere hunter of 
other animals. The present civilized man gradually 
developed from a start made probably thirty thousand 
years ago. It was the white man who made this start 
toward civilization, and he originated in Australia, if 
Sir H. H. Johnston knows what he is talking about. 
The white man has always been an adventurer, and, 
in the course of ages, spread over the earth. 



Wednesday, January 29. — The New-Zealander who 
sits at our table, and who lived awhile at Lancaster, 
Pa., said at breakfast this morning : 

"The people of the United States are the smartest 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 107 

in the world. No doubt about it. In everything 
worthy and desirable, they are ahead of any other peo- 
ple." 

This man was born in England, and lived in London 
many years, but is lately living in New Zealand. He 
believes the "Pennsylvania Dutch" he knew at Lancas- 
ter to be the best type of people he ever knew, and re- 
grets that all the people of the United States are not 
more like them. . . . This gentleman also showed 
us how the English and Scotch eat oatmeal porridge. 
They salt it, but never use sugar. In the left hand they 
hold a cup of milk, and into this they dip a spoonful 
of porridge before eating it. . . . It seems there 
was a blizzard yesterday ; the thermometer got down to 
fifty-six above. But we went about in our usual sum- 
mer clothing, and did not know it was a blizzard until 
this morning's papers appeared. ... In the 
botanical garden, this morning, I believe I saw the 
finest display of flowers I have ever seen. You hear 
much of the famous gardens of Japan, but I have never 
seen a Japanese garden as beautiful as that I saw this 
morning. The Japanese gardens are grotesque rather 
than beautiful. On the way back to town we visited 
a big department store, and remained an hour, watch- 
ing the crowds. Doctor Beeson and I followed Ade- 
laide around among the crowds of women, and enjoyed 
the experience. There was a special sale on, and postal 
cards had been reduced to a cent each. The store 
was a big one, but not nearly so large as the big ones 
in Kansas City. All the clerks were girls, and it was 
about the usual thing in special sales, except that prices 
were in pounds, shillings and pence. ... In the 



lOS TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

public places here, we see this sign very frequently : 
"Citizens, protect your own property." That is, 
everything belongs to the people, therefore why destroy 
anything? Some people are natural vandals, but peo- 
ple of a little culture and refinement never are. . . . 
In New Zealand, a woman has no interest in her hus- 
band's real estate. If a man desires to transfer a piece 
of real property here, his wife's signature to the deed is 
not necessary, as is the case in the United States. Still 
women have full suffrage in New Zealand. . . . 
Not only the talk is unintelligible here at times, but I 
see advertisements in the English newspapers I can't 
understand. Here is an exact copy of an advertise- 
ment in the Wellington Post of this date : 

WANTED— A General. Apply Mrs. Focke, 210 The Terrace. 

If you know what Mrs. Focke wants, you know more 
than I do. Here is another advertisement from the 
same newspaper : 

FOR SALE — Butchery business ; going concern ; average weekly killing, 
6 bodies and 30 small. Victor E. Smith, Box 59, Fielding. 

I haven't the remotest notion what the advertise- 
ment means. . . . The newspapers here, of course, 
have taken after the street railway company. They 
demand a universal fare of two cents, instead of two 
cents a section. It seems impossible to run a newspaper 
anywhere without abusing the street railway. One 
correspondent of The Post says the street car company 
is entitled to take in only enough to pay actual running 
expenses, as the increasing value of the property is 
profit enough. ... At luncheon today, our waiter 
at the Grand Hotel brought me an extra dish. "Ameri- 
can pork and beans," he announced triumphantly. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 109 

They never let me forget for a moment that I am an 
American, or that they have caught me at it. . . . 
The dry-goods men here are as big talkers as they are 
anywhere. In The Post of this afternoon, James 
Smith, Limited, offers a special sale in summer goods. 
Here is one price he quotes : 

" Ladies' one-piece washing frocks, in various colors, good value at 18s. 6(i.; 
carry your choice away tomorrow at 5s. lid. 

It seems that any sane woman would know that an 
article now offered at 5s. lid. (or $1.42) was never good 
value at 18s. Qd. (or $4.62). If James Smith ever sold 
an article at $4.62 and has now cut it to $1.42, he is a 
robber, and no woman should patronize him. Yet 
his store will be crowded with women tomorrow, and 
many of them will buy dry goods they do not need, 
at prices that afford James Smith, Limited, a fair 
profit. The manner in which smart merchants fool 
the women with special sales should receive attention 
at the next meeting of Congress. . . . Bob Fitz- 
simmons, the prize-fighter, came from New Zealand, 
and I think he is rather more popular at home than 
Melba is in Australia, where she was born. Indeed, I 
have heard Melba ''picked at" a good deal, while Fitz 
is generally pointed to With pride. 



Thursday, January 30. — A hair-cut and shave at the 
best shop in Wellington costs twenty-four cents. If 
a man buys a ticket, and pays in advance, for $1.50 he 
can get a shave every morning for a month, and one 
hair-cut. . . . On my way to the barber's this 



110 ■ TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

morning I saw this sign: "Mrs. Jew, private hotel," 
Here is another sign I saw: "Jerusalem & Son, jew- 
elers and New Zealand green-stone merchants." While 
waiting in the barber shop I saw this advertisement 
in a newspaper: "Wanted — A Rabbiter; also a saw 
doctor. Apply to F. P. Welch, Masterton." . . . 
My friend who lived for a time in Lancaster, Pa., and 
who so greatly admires the "Pennsylvania Dutch," 
told of a funny experience this morning. When he 
first landed in the United States he went into a barber 
shop, to be shaved. The barber asked him if he wanted 
a shampoo. The New-Zealander, thinking that this 
was merely a politeness, said he did. Then the barber 
asked him if he would have a face massage, and the 
New-Zealander accepted that offer, as well as several 
others, all the while thinking of the politeness of the 
American barbers. Finally, when the barber pre- 
sented his bill for $2.90, there was a row, and the New- 
Zealander denounced us all as robbers. . . . This 
New-Zealander, whom I shall call Mr. A., was very 
indignant when I told him about the snoring man on 
the ship, and has been telling ever since what should 
be done to a man who travels about to disturb his fel- 
low-men. "A man who snores," said Mr. A., "should 
remain at home." Mr. A. is a nervous man himself, 
and believes that a snoring man should in some way 
be prohibited. I noticed that Dr. Beeson, my friend 
from Chicago, did not fully accept Mr. A.'s opinion, 
and, when we are alone, the Doctor is disposed to rake 
Mr. A. over the coals. This has convinced me that 
the Doctor is a snoring man, so at nearly every meal I 
induce Mr. A. to abuse the man who is so impolite as 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. Ill 

to go to bed in a room with two others and snore all 
night. The Doctor and Mr. A. were at first quite 
friendly, but lately they quarrel most of the time. 
''That man," the Doctor said to me today, and re- 
ferring to Mr. A., "is getting on my nerves." The 
Doctor frequently comes up to my room to smoke a 
cigar, and sometimes I send out for a second cigar, that 
I may enjo}'' the aroma of the tobacco, but this is the 
only weak thing I do, so far as my resolution to quit 
tobacco is concerned. I no longer temporize; I do 
not chew toothpicks, or gum, or plug tobacco ; I have 
quit off short, and find it easier. If you are trying to 
quit tobacco, quit entirely, and do not aggravate your- 
self with cardamon seed, cloves, no-tobac, or anything 
else. ... I am going away tomorrow, but Mr. 
A. and the Doctor will remain another week, and after 
I am gone, and no longer able to keep them apart, I 
expect them to have a fight, about snoring. . . . 
The Doctor is going home by way of South America 
direct, and will round Cape Horn. He said last even- 
ing, while smoking in my room: "Well, I now have 
absolutely nothing to do for forty-eight days, except 
to send one cablegram at Buenos Aires." His state- 
ment was a very good illustration of the idleness of 
travelers. He does not like traveling by sea, but says 
it does him good, although he does not observe the good 
effect until he has been at home some time. He will 
be nineteen days at sea, without sight of land ; an ex- 
perience I will have between Australia and South 
Africa. . . . An Englishman I met here today was 
laughing at Americans because they call one horse a 
"team." He was also amused because Americans eat 



\ 



112 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

pie in the middle of a meal. That is the way many of 
the stories about Americans originate : they are made 
up. I have lived in America considerably more than 
half a century, and never knew anyone to refer to one 
horse as a "team." or eat pie in the middle of a meal. 
. . . There is a young man staying at this hotel 
who doesn't seem to know much. "I don't believe," 
said Mr. A. today, ''that he is a full shilling." Mean- 
ing, "I don't believe he has good sense." This young 
fellow is a ''remittance man;" he has a rich father in 
England, and receives a remittance every month — he 
is kept in New Zealand in the hope that he will get 
killed, or drink himself to death. . . . The officers 
of small ships, since the big "Titanic" went down, fre- 
quently ask travelers: "Well, are you satisfied now 
that a big ship can sink?" Sailors, like other men, 
are jealous. ... A traveling Englishman is never 
satisfied unless he shows his pajamas all over a ship or 
hotel. This morning, at 7 : 20, I left my room to go 
down on the street for a walk before breakfast. In the 
hall I found an Englishman, dressed in pajamas only, 
quietly drinking tea from a tray held by a maid. 



Friday, January 31. — At 4 : 20 this afternoon we 
left the Grand Hotel, and went on board the "Maun- 
ganui," advertised to sail for Sydney at 5. The 
Chicago doctor went with us, and said he should be 
very lonesome after our departure. He says he intends 
to amuse himself by trimming up Mr. A., the gentle- 
man who lived awhile at Lancaster, Pa. This gentle- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 113 

man has very positive notions about everything, par- 
ticularly about Americans, and the Doctor says he in- 
tends to talk the Chicago language to him after we go. 
"I didn't like to say anything rough while Miss Ade- 
laide was at the table," the Doctor said, "but I'll be 
mad anyway, because of your going, and he'll hear 
from me." In addition to his liberal notions about 
punishing men who snore, Mr. A. "makes up" stories 
about Americans. He says, for example, that when 
he was in Chicago, the hotel bell-boy who guided him 
to his room took hold of his coat, looked at it critically, 
and said : "What funny clothes you Englishmen wear." 
The Doctor is certain no such thing ever happened, at 
Chicago or elsewhere, and proposes to say so to the 
hero of the incident. . . . The "Maunganui" is 
a large ship, nearly new, but instead of two men in my 
room I found three. The ship has two parlors, very 
large and fine, the floors covered with Turkish rugs, 
but its staterooms are very small, and most of them 
are provided with four beds ; and extra beds are made 
in the dining-room. There are twice as many passen- 
gers on the ship as there should be ; there are almost 
as many at the second sitting in the dining-saloon as 
at the first. . . . Very much to our surprise, Mr. 
A. came down to see us off, and, on hearing that I was 
to occupy a room with three others, said he wouldn't 
stand it; that there was a way of avoiding such dis- 
agreeable things, and that he always found it. The 
Doctor nudged me, and, when the row starts, this big 
talk will probably come up, also. Mr. A. says he has 
already spoken to the head waiter at the Grand, and 
given him notice that our places at his table must be 



114 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

taken by pleasant people. . . . Owing to an extra 
amount of freight, the ship did not get away until 7 
o'clock ; the Doctor and Mr. A. left at 6, and, the last 
we saw of them, they seemed to be getting along 
amicably. . . . We finished dinner in time to go 
on deck and see the ship leave the harbor. A heavy 
wind had been blowing several days, and we expected 
bad weather outside, but in this we were disappointed ; 
the sea was as calm as I have ever seen it, and we 
walked the decks until ten o'clock. Adelaide is not so 
lucky this trip, and has three women in her room. 
. . . The piano-playing began within an hour after 
dinner, and most of the players were young men. There 
are more amateur musicians in this section, probably, 
than in any other part of the world. . . . Two of 
the passengers, young Englishmen, are wearing smok- 
ing-jackets with their initials embroidered on the 
left arm. It is an entirely new idea, and it does not 
seem improbable that other Englishmen will adopt it. 
. . . Travel between New Zealand and Australia 
is enormous. The boats of the Union Steamship Co. 
are always crowded. And, in saying your prayers at 
night, ask for a special curse on the Union Steamship 
Co., as well as on the Standard Oil Co., and the East- 
man Kodak Co. It is a monopoly, and does just as it 
pleases ; and it pleases to put four men in a room nine 
by ten feet, which I regard as a greater outrage than 
that Decoration day, or Arbor day, or Flag day, are 
not more generally observed. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 115 

Saturday, February 1. — I have spent this day in 
bed, seasick. Early this morning we ran into a rough 
sea, and not one passenger in twenty appeared at 
breakfast. Fortunately, the three others in my room 
are very polite gentlemen, but this did not prevent 
them from being ill, and four sick men in a room nine 
by ten feet, with one small window, and that closed, is 
not pleasant. In our room there is not so much as a 
chair to sit on, and not as many hooks as one man re- 
quires for his clothing, on retiring ; I have no hooks at 
all in my berth, and, when I went to bed, was compelled 
to pile my clothes on the bed, or under it. There is one 
washbowl for four men, and, after two have used it, 
the water in this runs out. And this on the largest and 
finest ship sailing out of New Zealand. And I paid $5 
in addition to the usual tariff, in order that I might 
have better than the average first-class passenger. 
I have never before seen four persons placed in a room 
on a steamship ; it occasionally happens that the sofa 
is used for a third passenger, when a ship is badly 
crowded, but on the Atlantic this is rare ; passengers 
won't stand it. But here, six are often placed in first- 
class cabins, and there does not seem to be much pro- 
test. The newspapers are always abusing the railroads, 
which actually supply very good accommodations ; I 
wonder they do not have something to say about the 
steamships. The two parlors on the "Maunganui" 
must be 100 feet long, and as broad as the ship itself ; 
yet they are rarely occupied by more than a dozen, 
while four people are forced to occupy a room nine by 
ten. The smoking-room is a fine apartment, and the 
halls are wide and airy, but the cabins are disgrace- 



116 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

fully small. If an American is unwise enough to travel, 
he should not visit this part of the world, where the 
ships are all small, and where there does not seem to 
be the slightest protest against four or six in a cabin. 
The new and fast ships on the Atlantic travel from 
New York to Queenstown in almost the time required 
to travel from Australia to New Zealand, for the ships 
here are slow as well as small. The distances here are 
great ; in Europe, a trip of seven hours, which includes 
crossing the English channel, takes you from London 
to Paris. A night takes you from Paris to Switzerland, 
and another night to Rome. All the big sights there 
are comparatively close together; but the time from 
San Francisco to Australia is three weeks, and, if you 
go by boat from Sydney, the time to South Africa is 
four weeks. If you have a notion to visit this part of 
the world, give it up. The people here are always 
polite, but it is a country an American will find him- 
self familiar with. The Maori wars in New Zealand 
were like our Indian wars, and the bush-rangers in 
Australia were like our Western cattle thieves, gamblers, 
and gun-men. There is nothing picturesque here, as 
there is in Japan, which may be reached from San 
Francisco in four days' less time than is required to 
reach Australia. Besides, very large ships sail from 
San Francisco to Japan and China, whereas only small 
ships sail from San Francisco to Australia or New Zea- 
land. ... It is my experience that there is 
always something unpleasant about a ship. Every 
ship has some peculiarity of motion at sea, and one 
trip does not accustom you to another. I waited a 
week in New Zealand in order to cross in the big "Maun- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 117 

ganui," but the worst spell of seasickness I ever had 
was in one of the "Maunganui's" rooms. And three 
other gentlemen, all experienced travelers, joined me 
in it, and we grunted, and growled, and swore all day. 
I refer to this ship as a big one ; its tonnage is 7,800 ; 
a boat twice as large is considered rather small on the 
Atlantic. And the idea that the Pacific is smooth and 
the Atlantic violent, is a fiction. Both are violent at 
times, and one is not much worse than the other. This 
is the most favorable season, and we have had much 
bad weather. . . . My part of stateroom 15, for 
which I paid a stiff price, is about as big as a coffin. 
Next thing, they will put a cot in the space between 
the four beds, and sell it to a silly man who thinks there 
is joy in traveling, and discovers his mistake after ac- 
tually trying it. I am as finicky and fussy as an old 
maid when it comes to sleeping, but my indignation 
over four in a room does me no good ; no one else seems 
to object to it. I suppose I will next draw a room for 
six; but I don't care — I should as soon have the 
whole ship's company in with me as three. . . . 
One is treated better everywhere than at sea. In order 
to travel comfortably, a man should be married, and 
have his wife with him. Then he could have her in a 
room with him, and impose on her, as usual. . . . 
A woman traveling incognito, and occupying my bed 
on this ship, would not be shocked by the three other 
men in the room. They are polite, clean, decent, and 
considerate. They are Australian commercial trav- 
elers, and this morning one of them told an" "American 
story," for my benefit. A man was standing on a street 



118 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

corner in Chicago, vigorously puffing a big cigar. A 
good man approached him, and said : 

"Do you realize the waste of smoking? How many 
cigars do you smoke a day?" 

The smoker estimated the number at fifteen, and 
said he had been smoking at least twenty years. 

"Had you saved that money," the good man said, 
"you might have owned that sky-scraper," pointing to 
a big building across the street. 

"Do you smoke?" the smoker asked the good man. 

"Certainly not," was the indignant answer. 

"Do you own that sky-scraper?" 

"No." 

"Well," replied the smoker, puflSng complacently 
on his cigar, "I do." 



Sunday, February 2. — This has been as fine a day 
as I have ever experienced on a ship. As a rule, the 
weather is better far out at sea than near land. Yes- 
terday the passengers were confined to their rooms, and 
everywhere one might hear them trying to get rid of that 
last meal, but today they are all on deck. It is a polite 
and agreeable company, and the ship is fine, but I still 
dislike the sea. I don't care much for close contact 
with a lot of people, however polite and agreeable they 
may be. It is pleasant enough to be in a crowd for an 
hour or two, and note human characteristics, but four 
or five days of it is too much. . . . From the time 
you start on a trip until you return, you have the same 
things to eat. Bills of fare on ships are exactly alike, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 119 

and hotels copy the ships. I am offered a great variety 
of food on the "Maunganui," but do not care for it: 
at dinner today I ordered a plate of soup, and lamb 
with mint sauce, although the bill of fare showed a very 
great variet3^ Meals are announced in the usual way : 
by a man playing a cornet. The man on the "Maun- 
ganui" is unusual in that he plays a part of a selection 
at every meal, and poses while playing. ... In 
this country, the uglier the man, the more sheep he 
owns. The ugliest man I have ever seen is on board, 
and he is said to be the sheep king of New Zealand. It 
is no unusual thing for a man in New Zealand or Aus- 
tralia to own thirty or forty thousand sheep. . . . 
This evening, after dinner, I was amused in watching 
a smart young fellow in the second cabin. The second 
cabin deck is separated from ours by a rail containing 
this notice : ''Second cabin passengers not allowed for- 
ward of this." The smart young fellow was amusing 
a number of companions by walking around the first 
cabin deck. His companions thought he was extremely 
devilish, and laughed boisterously when he returned 
safely. I sat near them, and could hear their conver- 
sation. The bold young man said that if anyone would 
give him a shilling, he would go up the stairs to the next 
deck, and spend it in the first cabin smoking-room. 
The shilling was produced, and I saw the young man 
disappear up the stairway. Then he offered to speak 
to the captain for another shilling, and disappeared 
for that purpose, but whether he did it or not, I do 
not know. The young men were having a tremendous 
lot of fun without harming anyone. . . . Last 
night there was almost continuous piano-playing in the 



120 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

big parlor of the ship. A man or woman was waiting 
all the time, with music, for a chance at the piano ; it re- 
minded me of passengers waiting around the bath- 
rooms during the rush hour. Two young girls, sisters, 
sat in the room the entire evening. They pretended 
to be reading, but they were really watching and talk- 
ing about people, and their short, quick remarks to 
each other probably contained a good deal of ginger. 
. . . When you can't do anything else to a boy, you 
can make him wash his face. There is a man on board 
with a son seven or eight years old, and certainly every 
hour I hear the father say to the son: ''Go to your 
room, sir, and wash your face. And use a little extra 
soap on your hands." . . . Seasickness is no dis- 
grace. Governor Grose, of American Samoa, and who 
is also captain of the warship "Princeton," told me 
that he is often seasick; and he has been a sailor 
twenty-five years. ... I heard a man making a 
long explanation today, and I knew he was not telling 
the truth ; an explanation is never the truth, on sea or 
land. ... A lonesome old woman on board at- 
tracts the attention of all the passengers. I talked to 
her awhile this afternoon, and she made one remark I'll 
never forget. 

"My children," she said, "are already reconciled to 
my death." 

She is traveling alone, is ill, and occupies a room 
with three young women who don't want her in with 
them, and she is very wretched. Will your children 
be reconciled to your death by the time you are sixty- 
five or seventy? Probably; maybe earlier. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 121 

Monday, February 3. — A man on board was born 
in Warsaw, New York, but has been in business in Syd- 
ney for the past thirty years. He says the Australian 
and New Zealand newspapers are habitually unfair with 
events in the United States. He often writes to the 
editors, and corrects their blunders, but they refuse 
to print his letters. The papers frequently print refer- 
ences to American crooks arriving in Australasia which 
are palpably unfair and untrue; on one occasion the 
American obtained a letter from the police authorities 
saying that certain thieves referred to as Americans, 
were not Americans, but not a newspaper in Australia 
would print the American's indignant denial. All 
American news in the Australian and New Zealand 
papers comes from London, although it might be easily 
obtained direct from American papers. American news 
coming by way of London is of course unreliable. He 
says that the middle-class people here admire Amer- 
icans, but that the Imperialists do not, and always 
misrepresent them. I asked him what he meant by 
the term '^ Imperialist." 

"Well," he replied, "an Australian or New-Zealander 
will go to London, and be entertained at dinner by a 
cheap duke or knight. After that, he is an Imperialist, 
and talks of England as 'back home.' Admiration for 
the rich is often ridiculous, but it is nothing compared 
with admiration for a title." 

I asked him how the general prosperity here compared 
with the average prosperity in America. He replied 
that the farmers here are more prosperous generally 
than the farmers of New York state. 

"But," I said to him, "the farmers of New York 



122 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

state are not typical American farmers. Our typical 
farmers are found in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, 
Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma, and states of that class." 

"I have heard of the great prosperity of Kansas 
farmers," he said; "our farmers are not as prosperous 
as the Kansas farmers are said to be. And our farmers 
do not live as well as yours. Not on one farm in fifty 
here will you find a vegetable garden or fruit tree; I 
should say your farmers are much superior to ours in 
culture, too. Certainly the educational test is higher 
in your rural communities than it is with us. Your 
working-people, in my judgment, earn better wages 
than ours." 

iEere, as elsewhere, the railroads are considered fair 
game for every swindler. This man says that a few 
months ago there was a railroad accident in Australia, 
and three hundred and forty-three claims for damages 
were filed. Investigation revealed the fact that there 
were but two hundred and fifty-one passengers on 
the wrecked train. . . . One prominent fault 
here is overcrowding. You notice it on every rail- 
road train, in every ship, and in every hotel. Crowd- 
ing is barbarism. The railroads, although owned 
by the government, do not run enough trains. The 
ship on which this is written is crowded beyond 
the legal or safe limit. . . . Possibly you do 
not know that the casings of American "wieners" 
come from Australian or South-American sheep. I 
met a traveling-man the other day who sells noth- 
ing but sausage casings; mainly sheep entrails, 
and his house has branches nearly everywhere. The 
most interesting thing in the world is business, but 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 123 

it is neglected by magazines and newspapers for scandal 
or foolish fiction. . . . There is a good deal of 
excitement here now over what is called "American 
blight," which affects fruit. My American friend who 
lives in Sydney says he secured undoubted evidence 
that the blight existed in Tasmania in 1832, and does 
not come from America, but the newspapers will not 
print his evidence. ... I can easily understand 
that everything American is unfairly treated by the 
papers of Australia. We in America are grossly unfair 
with everything English, not because we desire to be, 
but because we do not know any better. I grossly ex- 
aggerate that which I do not understand, and so does 
everyone. . . . The fine weather continues, and 
all day the sea has been as smooth as a pond. I am in 
good humor today, but I am still of the opinion that 
four men in a steamship room nine by ten is an out- 
rage. You cannot realize its discomfort until you have 
had experience. . . . Late last night, while sitting 
in the music-room of the ship "Maunganui," a steward 
came in to collect the steamer rugs scattered about. 
The steward told me that for several months he has 
averaged $35 a week in tips. The ship is always 
crowded ; this trip there were ninety people at the 
second sitting in the dining-room. As a result, the 
stewards have a double number in the dining-room and 
a double number in the staterooms. I doubt if the 
captain makes more than the most popular and capable 
stewards on his ship. A passenger told me that he 
frequently sees the stewards of the "Maunganui" rid- 
ing in motor cars in Sydney, and drinking champagne 
with lady friends in the expensive restaurants. The 



124 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

steward said that when he starts on a trip, he can look 
over the passengers in his care and tell almost exactly 
what he will get in tips when the ship lands. He showed 
me a $5 gold-piece which one man had given him, al- 
though the usual tip is $1.25. Why did that passenger 
give $5? Largely because he was a fool, I should say, 
for ship servants rarely do anything special for passen- 
gers. The steward told me, also, that the tourists are 
the best pay ; that commercial men demand a good deal 
of service, and tip lightly, whereas all tourists tip liber- 
ally, whether they receive any special attention or not. 
As soon as a tourist goes on a ship, he begins inquiring 
concerning the tipping customs, and if he asks the bar- 
ber, or an officer, he is advised to be liberal. There is 
a law in New Zealand which prohibits ship employees 
from working more than eight hours a day. , . . 
One of the passengers is a man named Willis, Speaker 
of the New South Wales House of Parliament. He is 
accompanied by his wife, two young lady daughters, 
and a son. All of them ate at the second sitting in the 
dining-room. I was told by several passengers that 
Willis is very unpopular ; he certainly received no at- 
tention on board. In Australia there are only two 
political parties : the Labor and the Liberal. Willis, 
it is said, was a Liberal for years, and then switched to 
Labor, although he is not a workingman ; on the con- 
trary, he is well off. Many people regard him as a 
political adventurer, but they all credit him with un- 
usual cleverness. I predict that some of these days 
he will get even with the Union Steamship Co. for put- 
ting him at the second sitting in the dining-room. I 
heard an American woman say lately that New Zea- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 125 

land women wear funny shoes and corsets. The Speak- 
er 's women-folks do ; for several days I thought Willis 
was a prosperous sheep farmer going to Sydney to 
spend his money. The women of Australia lack the 
good taste in dress that distinguishes the women of 
countries less prosperous. . . . Young children are 
better behaved here than in the United States ; they 
"mind" better, and lack the impudence which dis- 
tinguishes so many children with us. . . . The 
population of New Zealand does not increase ; that 
country does not hustle for immigrants, as Australia 
does. Besides, a good many of the New Zealand sheep 
farmers are going to Argentina, in South America, one 
of the wonders of modern times, and more favorable 
for sheep-raising than this section. Wellington, a fine 
town, and the capital of New Zealand, does not grow ; 
when I was there, the old wooden capitol was being 
repaired, and will probably be used another forty years. 
The population of New Zealand is only a million ; but 
for that matter big Australia has only five times as 
many, almost one-half of them being in the big cities 
on the coast. The interior of Australia is hot, and its 
inhabitants hug the coast. 



Tuesday, February 4. — The greatest pleasure of 
this day consisted of leaving the ship. At 8 o'clock this 
morning I had another sight of Sydney's famous har- 
bor, and at 9 we landed and went to the Australia Hotel, 
where we saw another fine sight : several Americans. 
We found Mr. and Mrs. Harry Clay Blaney, the New 



126 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

York theatrical people, there, and several others we 
knew on the ''Sonoma." The Blaneys leave next Sat- 
urday for the Philippine Islands and China, by a ship 
of twenty-seven hundred tons ; it is so small that it 
cannot accommodate more than two dozen first-class 
passengers. Nothing could induce me to take that 
trip ; the ship is too small. I leave on the 12th for 
Durban, in South Africa, on the "Anchises," a ship 
of 12,000 tons, and have been grumbling because it is 
not larger. . . . Another American I met there is 
W. B. Knight, born in New York state, and reared in 
the Standard Oil Co. family at Cleveland, Ohio. He 
is now connected with the Texas company, but re- 
ceived all his training with the Standard. There is a 
great deal of romance connected with Mr, Knight's 
business career. He has lived in Persia, India, China, 
Japan, Australia, the Straits Settlements, and half a 
dozen other strange places. His wife is the daughter 
of another wandering oil man, and they were married 
at Canton, China, at the American Legation, by a 
preacher from Pennsylvania. His wife is with him 
here, and they are both anxious to get home : both de- 
clare that this is their last trip — that they are tired of 
hotel, ship and railroad life. Mr. Knight said to me : 
"I am now an opponent of the Standard Oil Co., but 
have no hesitancy in saying that the manner in which 
that company is persecuted by the government is a 
disgrace. I have been intimate with Standard affairs 
a quarter of a century, and have never known the com- 
pany to be guilty of a disreputable or dishonest act. 
The company with which I have been connected a 
year, the Texas company, is composed almost entirely 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 127 

of men trained by the Standard, and we are trying to do 
what the Standard has done. We are the opposition, 
but our business methods are no better than those of 
the Standard." 



Wednesday, February 5. — I am almost persuaded 
that Sydney is one of the handsomest cities I have ever 
visited. One of its numerous bays extends so far in 
the interior that it is called a river. We traveled up it 
today by boat for an hour and a half, and all the way 
saw handsome homes, and attractive coves. Return- 
ing, we came by electric car most of the way, and saw 
another interesting part of the city. While waiting 
for a car, we went into a little place for a drink. We 
ordered what seemed to be ginger ale, and it was cold ; 
it is warmer in Australia than in New Zealand, and the 
people have learned the value of ice. "In America, 
you would call it pop," the woman said. There is no 
doubt here as to our identity. . . . The weather 
today has been as hot as we ever get it on the Fourth 
of July. And this the 5th of February. ... In 
the United States there is a great rivalry as to the best 
five-cent cigar. Here the manufacturers of six-cent 
cigars make equally extravagant claims. . . . There 
is nothing serious the matter with this country except 
that managers of steamships put four in a room 9x10 
feet. The officers of the ships do not sleep in any such 
higgledy-piggledy fashion ; they insist upon large single 
rooms for themselves, but force four passengers into a 
room not big enough for one. During the Spanish- 
American war, you may remember that the American 



128 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

officers, including Theodore Roosevelt, rebelled against 
certain regulations of their superiors. This rebellion 
they called a round robin. This country needs a sim- 
ilar rebellion against four in the same steamship room. 
. . . There are so many ferries in Sydney harbor 
carrying people to different suburbs along the bays that 
occasionally incoming steamships are held up during 
rush hours, in order that the ferry traffic may not be 
interfered with. This usually happens between 7 : 30 
and 8 in the morning. . . . Wherever English 
print is in use, you will see the name of Theodore 
Roosevelt. He knows more of the art of securing free 
advertising than any other living man. In a morning 
paper I find a Melbourne dispatch saying the Minister 
for Home Affairs has received a letter from Mr. Roose- 
velt. A part of the letter is quoted, as follows : 

"There is nothing that would give me more pleasure 
than to visit Australia. I cannot imagine any Amer- 
ican seriously interested in the affairs of his country 
and of the world who would not feel himself fortunate 
to visit your great commonwealth. You have been 
pioneers along many paths of social and industrial re- 
form. I have personally a very great admiration for 
the Australian people. One of my prized hunting 
companions in Africa was an Australian," etc., etc. 

In the same newspaper I find the following from New 
Zealand : 

"The High Commissioner for New Zealand said he 
was proud that the Dominion had led the way in pre- 
senting a battleship to the British Empire. Mr. James 
Allen, Minister for Defense, said New Zealand would 
not be satisfied until she gave both men and ships." 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 129 

What may be said of New Zealand may be said of 
Australia. Is it pioneering in social or industrial re- 
form for a peaceful country to build battleships, and 
present them to a quarrelsome king thousands of miles 
away? . . . This afternoon I went to a theatre, 
and saw moving pictures of the Panama canal. The 
pictures have packed the house for weeks; they are 
doing much to increase respect here for American 
energy and ability. The comments I heard around 
me were extremely gratifying. Never in the history 
of the world has a great work been carried on as ener- 
getically, as economically or as intelligently as at Pan- 
ama. These pictures prove the smartness of the 
Yankee, and the actual accomplishment at Panama is 
as great as the big talk about the smart Yankee has 
ever been. ... In this city of Sydney there is a 
big department store operated by the Anthony Hordern 
Co. Anthony Hordern was a plodder who built up a 
great business, and died from overwork at sixty-four. 
The business is now managed by heads of departments 
trained by Anthony Hordern, but his two sons own it. 
A floor-walker told me today that the store employs 
four thousand people, and has fifteen acres of floor 
space. I do not know just how much an Australian's 
statements should be discounted ; the average at home 
is about one-third. The store has a special sale on now, 
which is attracting great crowds, as special sales seem 
to everywhere. Wherever I go here, floor-walkers step 
up and ask if I have been waited on, whereupon I reply 
that I am simply a visitor looking about, etc. In most 
cases the floor-walker will show me around ; at An- 
thony Hordern's today, he mentioned Marshall Field's 



130 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

place in Chicago, and at once labeled me as an Amer- 
ican. The Anthony Hordern store is very large, but 
not half as big as the Marshall Field store. And it 
isn't half as fine. The Hordern store looks old-fash- 
ioned; the ceilings are low, and the place isn't very 
neat — I don't know exactly what the trouble is, but I 
was compelled to tell the floor-walker, a very polite 
man, that it wasn't in the Marshall Field class. . . . 
At sea, I become angry, and half the time won't take 
my bath^ or shave, or dress for dinner, but when I am 
on land, I am good-natured, and thoroughly enjoy 
going about. It is a joy for me to poke around a 
strange town. On our return to Sydney we employed 
the same boy who showed us about on our first visit ; 
we liked the little man, although we could not under- 
stand half he said. At the Anthony Hordern store 
today, we wanted to go up to the art department, but 
the elevator man could not understand my prommci- 
ation of the word Art. The boy had heard the floor- 
walker recommend that we visit the Art department, 
so he pronounced the word Art, and the elevator man 
understood him. . . . The floor-walker wanted to 
introduce me to young Anthony Hordern, but I asked 
to be excused. No doubt the son was like a sailor on 
the ''Sonoma:" Captain Trask said he wasn't worth 
much except to play the part of "Neptune" when the 
ship crossed the line. ... I am good-natured now, 
and intend to dress for dinner tonight, and drink coffee 
in the Winter Garden afterwards, but as soon as I go 
on board the "Anchises" at Adelaide, I expect to be 
mad again. The sea knocks me, and I can't help it. 
And it will knock you, if you fool with it, and have lived 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 131 

in a prairie country a good deal. . . . Adelaide has 
been much interested in the fact that there is a smart 
city in Australia named Adelaide ; it is at this town we 
take ship for South Africa. She has also been inter- 
ested in Cape Howe, and Lord Howe Island; but I 
called her attention to a historical fact today which had 
previously escaped her. It seems that in the early days, 
one of the famous bush-rangers was Michael Howe, a 
convict who had been a sailor. He was sent here to 
serve seven years for robbery, but he escaped, and joined 
a band of bush-rangers. He soon became their chief, 
and ruled like a tyrant. He was also very haughty, 
calling himself "the governor of the range." The gov- 
ernor of the colony he called "the governor of the town." 
A price was placed on the head of Michael Howe, and 
one day a sailor named Worral, also a convict, brought 
it in. Worral received the promised reward, and was 
sent back to England a free man. No convicts have 
been sent to Australia from England since 1868. . . . 
You may think I grumble about ships a good deal. 
You mainly hear grumbling on shipboard. Whoever 
tells the truth will confess that he didn't have a very 
good time at sea. When I went on the trip to the 
West Indies, I did so well that I fancied I was becoming 
a sad sea-dog. This experience induced me to under- 
take the present journey ; but I know now that my sea- 
legs are wobbly. I can get along well enough on land 
anywhere, but I do not understand the ways of ocean- 
going crews, or of those strange persons who pretend 
to like ship voyages. 



132 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Thursday, February 6. — This morning we went 
with the Blaneys to inspect the "Prince Waldemar," 
the little ship on which they will sail next Saturday for 
the Philippine Islands and China. Except that it is 
small, we were delighted with it. The servants are Jap- 
anese, and the sailors of a brown race with which we 
are not familiar. The Blaneys have a stateroom with 
two windows ; it is so large that the chief steward of 
the ''Maunganui" would have crowded at least six 
into it. Never travel on a popular ship, or fall in love 
with a beautiful woman who has many admirers. The 
servants of the "Prince Waldemar" were as grateful 
for a little attention as an old maid. The boat is said 
to have excellent management, but it is only half as 
big as the "Sonoma," and the "Sonoma" is a pony. 
The "Prince Waldemar" is a 2,700-ton boat; the 
" Anchises," on which we sail for South Africa, is 12,000 
tons. Any ship under 17,000 tons is a crime. There 
are no real ships in Australian waters ; if a real ship 
should visit Sydney, people would come from New 
Zealand, and travel four and six in a room, to look at it. 
A ship of 12,000 tons is referred to as a "Leviathan of 
the Deep" in the papers here. The "Baltic," on which 
I crossed the Atlantic not very long ago, is a 38,000-ton 
ship ; and, when the weather is rough, it is none too 
large. The Hamburg-American company is building 
a ship almost twice as large as the "Baltic." . . . 
Near the "Prince Waldemar" lay the "Ventura," sis- 
ter ship of the "Sonoma," and which sails for San Fran- 
cisco next Saturday. We went on board, and it was 
like a visit home, as it is exactly like the "Sonoma" 
in every detail. We showed our "Sonoma" pictures, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 133 

and soon had members of the crew interested. Among 
other pictures, we had one of the ''Ventura," taken at 
sea when we passed it on Christmas day. The Amer- 
ican flag was displayed at the ship's peak, and it looked 
as good to us as it probably looks to an old soldier on 
Decoration Day. . . . We meet traveling ac- 
quaintances every day. This morning we met Mr. 
Adams, the life insurance man, whose wife was so ill on 
the "Sonoma," and who was so devoted to her that the 
men were proud of him. "I am staying at the Went- 
worth," he said ; "it is twice as good as the Australia." 
The Australia Hotel is the best in Australasia (which in- 
cludes New Zealand), and of course many hotels are 
said to be superior to it. Mr. Adams is meeting his 
wife's kin for the first time, but I neglected to ask him 
if he suited. . . . We also met the Sandersons. 
We greatly admired Mrs. Sanderson, in spite of the fact 
that she is English. She was coming over to meet her 
husband's people for the first time, and we predicted 
she would be satisfactory ; but she was fearful — people 
are so particular in cases of that kind. Mr. Sanderson, 
however, told me that his folks dearly love his wife. 
Mr. Sanderson is the man who operates apple orchards 
in Oregon, and they leave for home on Saturday, on 
the "Ventura." . . . At 7 : 40 in the evening we 
resumed The Traveler's Trot, and departed by train 
for Melbourne, 585 miles. The railroad is standard 
gauge, and the sleeper very good. As usual, we found 
the train crowded. Melbourne is almost as large as 
Sydney, yet there is but one railroad between the two 
cities, and this runs but one train a day : a train in 
three sections, leaving at 7 : 40, 8 and 9 : 30 p. m. Be- 



134 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

tween Kansas City and Chicago there are at least five 
direct lines, and each line runs numerous through trains 
daily: morning, noon, and night. The government 
lines do not pay as high wages as our privately owned 
lines. The train on which I traveled between Sydney 
and Melbourne is the best in Australia ; it may be com- 
pared with the Pennsylvania Limited between Chicago 
and New York. The conductor, or guard, received 
$3 a day. The engineer received $3.75 a day, and the 
fireman $1.75. Engineers on freight trains here re- 
ceive as low as $3 a day. The wages of similar em- 
ployees in the United States are certainly double. . . . 
The train made good time, and I slept better than I 
usually sleep in a sleeping-car. The sleeper was not 
gaudy and heavy like a Pullman, but it did very well. 
The only attendant was a white man, who made up 
the beds as well as took the tickets. The sleeping-car 
fare from 8 p. m. to 7 a. m. (when we changed to cars of 
another gauge), was $2.50. The charge for a similar 
service in the United States is universally $2. The 
train fare was about two and a half cents a mile; in 
Kansas, the universal charge for first-class passengers 
is two cents a mile. The time was rather fast, but as 
the cars were light, the train was noisy and unsteady. 
The people in Australia are more accustomed to Amer- 
icans than are New-Zealanders, and we do not attract 
so much attention, but they immediately spot us as 
Americans. I have never in my life, anywhere, met 
as many polite people as I have met here and in New 
Zealand ; I believe I have said this before, but I wish 
to repeat and emphasize the statement. ... I 
think I detect a slight difference between New Zealand 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 135 

and Australia : the last named is more prosperous, and 
does everything a little better. Australians have a 
little of the swagger and strut you detect in Chicago 
people, whereas New-Zealanders are as modest as peo- 
ple living in St. Louis, or any other less prosperous and 
enterprising city. 



Friday, February 7. — In the wash-room of the 
sleeping-car, early this morning, I met an American, 
a Boston man, who has been a gentleman farmer in 
Australia for twelve years. He told me he owned 52,- 
000 acres of land, and that whereas he came here with 
nothing twelve years ago, he would not take a million 
and a half dollars for what he owns now. He origin- 
ally visited the country on business, thought he de- 
tected great possibilities, and came here to live. He 
didn't know corn from barley when he began, but ap- 
plied business rules to farming, and has succeeded. I 
expressed surprise as to his large land-holding, where- 
upon he told me that in the interior there are sheep 
farms five hundred miles square, or as big as the state 
of Kansas. This land is leased from the government 
at a penny an acre. Artesian wells three thousand 
feet deep are being bored, and these wells are greatly 
improving the arid districts. There are plenty of stock 
farms in Australia 150 to 200 miles square. . . . 
The Boston man pays a good deal of attention to dairy- 
ing, although he is interested in all branches of farming : 
fruit, vegetables, grain, stock, etc., and employs 280 
men. Farm wages are lower here, judging from what 
he told me, than in the United States. He has no 



136 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

renters on his land; he calls that ''the lazy, shiftless 
way." He says the people here do not know the mean- 
ing of hard work ; that they work only five days a week, 
and have very short hours, whereas he has always 
worked long hours every day ; and it agrees with him, 
for he is stout, and looks exactly like a prosperous busi- 
ness man. He owns thousands of sheep and cattle; 
and if I did not make an error in my notes, he told me 
he made $175,000 from his land last year, I remember 
the statement particularly because he had just been 
telling me about an income tax lately imposed, and 
which hit him hard. One tract of his land, 2,500 acres, 
cost him $150,000, counting an irrigation plant which 
he built; but lately he refused $225,000 for it. He 
predicts that as soon as Americans find out the oppor- 
tunities for making money here, they will come in 
flocks. He told me of one piece of land that is worth 
$400 an acre, and which has been producing corn at 
the rate of 100 bushels per acre for sixty-five years, 
without manuring. This is choice land in a choice 
district, and perhaps the statement is exaggerated, as 
we exaggerate when we talk of forty bushels of wheat 
sper acre, or seventy of corn. The country through 
which we were passing looked very dry, but the Amer- 
ican said it was good land ; the famous chocolate land 
of Australia, so named because the soil has a reddish 
cast. "We have been having a drouth for two 
months," he said, "and the dry weather is good for the 
land." He talked a good deal about "sour" and 
"sweet" soil. I said the expressions were new to me, 
and my companion laughingly replied that he was for- 
getting all he ever knew about America ; he made me 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 137 

think of an Englishman who had traveled a good deal 
in America, and had the rough edges worn off. At sev- 
eral of the stations through which we passed we saw a 
great deal of wheat piled on the ground, in three-bushel 
sacks. We also saw numerous twelve-ox teams along 
the country roads, hauling sacked wheat to market. 
Wheat is harvested here in a fashion which seems bet- 
ter than our way. A machine slightly larger than our 
harvester is used. This machine pulls the heads off the 
wheat, and threshes them ; the grain is then put into 
sacks, and dumped on the ground, as our harvesters 
dump the twine-bound sheaves. A number of Aus- 
tralian gentlemen farmers had joined the conversation 
by this time, and they all assured me that such a thing 
as a thresher is almost unknown here. Asked where 
the machine came from that harvested and threshed 
the wheat in one operation, they said they were sup- 
plied by the International Harvester Co., of America ; 
also, by an English company. I was compelled to con- 
fess I had never seen such a machine, or heard of one. 
Along the road I saw numerous wheat-fields which had 
evidently been treated in the manner indicated ; the 
grain heads had been frayed off, and the stalks left 
standing, for sheep pasturage. The gentlemen farm- 
ers told me of one man who had tried a new experiment 
in wheat-raising. He cleared his land, but did not 
break, or plow it, as we say ; instead, he drilled in his 
wheat on the unbroken land, and followed the drill 
with some sort of farm implement which slightly cov- 
ered the seed ; possibly it was a harrow — I did not quite 
understand the term used. The season was exception- 
ally favorable, and the wheat made an average of thir- 



138 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

teen bushels per acre. The land on which the experi- 
ment was tried was worth about $25 an acre. The rain- 
fall here varies from six to sixty inches, but the heavy 
rainfall usually comes in torrents, when it is not needed. 
In the center of the country, at points farthest from the 
coast, there is almost no rain at all. We were passing 
through what is possibly the best section of Australia, 
and it looked very dry to me ; I saw almost no rivers 
or creeks. It reminded me of India, or Colorado, or 
California, but my traveling acquaintances said : "Ah, 
yes; it looks dry now, after two months of drouth, 
but when the rain comes it will look as green as your 
country." I said: "It is evident that you run fewer 
sheep per acre here than in New Zealand." They ad- 
mitted it, but said the volcanic soil of New Zealand 
was much inferior to the chocolate soil of Australia; 
New Zealand has more rain than Australia, but not 
as good a soil, a fact I had myself noticed, . . . 
Wheat piled on the ground in sacks, seemed very shift- 
less to me. I saw no grain elevators, such as we have, 
and when the wheat is shipped, it is loaded in open box 
cars ; no protection from the weather. But in spite 
of many evidences of a dry country, you see many evi- 
dences of prosperity here, too. Australia is almost as 
big as the United States, but has only five million peo- 
ple; it doesn't need to feed a dozen sheep per acre. 
I also heard much of irrigation projects, and the coun- 
try seems to be booming. . . . At 8 a. m. we 
changed to another train ; to a railroad with a gauge 
of five feet three inches. The standard gauge of the 
world is four feet eight and a half inches; the usual 
narrow gauge is three feet six inches. The train on the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 139 

broad-gauge — 5 feet 3 inches — had a diner, but we 
could not get in, so we ate breakfast at a railway restau- 
rant. The broad-gauge train also had a parlor car, 
in which we had reserved seats, and were very com- 
fortable. We stopped every two or three hours, to per- 
mit the passengers to drink tea. The train was a fine 
one, but it could not be compared with our best trains, 
and was badly crowded, as is the usual custom over 
here in all public places. At ten minutes after one in 
the afternoon, we reached Melbourne. 



Saturday, February 8. — At Sydney, we had heard 
of 107 in the shade at Melbourne, but found the weather 
very pleasant. In a very gentlemanly sort of way, 
Melbourne and Sydney are jealous of each other. They 
are of about the same size, with Sydney in the lead, 
and forging ahead rapidly; but Melbourne has the 
capital, and this is a bone of contention. To get rid 
of it, there is a plan to build a capital in the interior, 
as we built Washington to patch up the quarrel be- 
tween cities anxious for the national capital. But 
Melbourne will indefinitely delay building a capital 
city in the sage-brush of the interior; I have heard 
this guess made many times. ... I have been par- 
ticularly pleased with the hotels in Australia and New 
Zealand, and am inclined to believe that Menzie's, in 
Melbourne, is the best of the lot. I have a telephone 
in my room, and a big wide bed, and the meals are sur- 
prisingly good. The price is $3.60 per day, including 
everything. I was recently at the Sherman House, 



140 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

in Chicago, and paid $3.50 per day for a room. What 
we call "the European plan" is almost unknown at 
hotels here. . • . Melbourne is a better town than 
I expected to find it. Its citizens admit that Sydney 
is larger, and growing more rapidly; indeed, I have 
heard them say Sydney will continue to grow more 
rapidly, as it has a better country around it. But Mel- 
bourne is a beautiful city, and Sydney has nothing to 
match its St. Kilda Road. This is a great driveway 
leading from the city to a sort of Coney Island. This 
driveway is lined with flowers, green grass and beautiful 
homes. And I did not see a bathing-beach in Sydney 
as handsome as St. Kilda beach. Melbourne has wider 
streets than Sydney, and seems to be more modern. 
"Don't you think," one man asked me, "that Mel- 
bourne is more like one of your American cities than 
Sydney?" The people here are as familiar as the peo- 
ple of New Zealand with the fact that we are Americans, 
but they see more Americans, and are not so much in- 
terested in them. Every man I talk with reminds me 
that I am an American ; always politely. I went yes- 
terday to see about my baggage. "Don't you find 
our system almost identical with yours in the United 
States?" the very agreeable and accommodating bag- 
gage agent asked. And the system of handling bag- 
gage here is the same as our system. ... I think 
the people of Melbourne are sick and tired hearing of 
Sydney's beautiful harbor ; particularly as Melbourne's 
harbor is not very large. There is a great bay here, 
but it is not a harbor ; it is almost as much of an open 
roadstead as Manila bay. . . . Melbourne has 
cable cars, but the system was not adopted because of 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 141 

hills, for the city is almost flat. I enjoyed riding again 
in the front end of a grip-car, as I used to do in the old 
days in Kansas City. On one line, the fare is six cents 
per passenger for riding the shortest distance. I saw 
one short electric line ; also, one horse-car line. . . . 
Years ago, the boomers declared that Melbourne needed 
a Convention hall, and one was finally built, after every 
citizen had been bored for a contribution, and soundly 
abused because he did not give more. Now the boom- 
ers are kept busy to find use for the hall. This month 
it is the scene of a Manufacturers' exhibition, and I saw 
a good many interesting things there yesterday after- 
noon. There is an aquarium in connection ; and at this 
place I saw the most interesting thing I have seen since 
leaving home — a monkey mother with a baby four or 
five weeks old. Monkeys always interest me, but this 
monkey with a baby was so much like a human mother 
that I watched her half an hour. The monkey baby 
was not well, and the mother watched over it pre- 
cisely as a human mother would have done. Occa- 
sionally the baby played with its toes, as you have seen 
human babies do. The mother gave all her attention 
to the baby; she did not neglect it for a moment. 
There is a human quality about monkeys that always 
attracts me. One I saw this morning at the zoological 
garden was an old chap, and he was frowsy and irri- 
table, as old men are, and the younger ones were afraid 
of him, and scampered out of his way. . . . We 
are still meeting "Sonoma" passengers; we encoun- 
tered one at this hotel last night — a Mr. Smart, a Lon- 
don publisher. Another passenger on the "Sonoma" 
is a newspaper man here, but we have not yet seen him. 



142 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

. . . The eggs used at Menzie's hotel are labeled. 
The two I had for breakfast were marked with a rub- 
ber stamp in this fashion: ''A. J. Paine, The Sisters, 
Teremo ; February 6, 1913." . . . This morning, 
while at St. Kilda beach, we looked at the manj'- ships 
in Port Melbourne, and distinguished a big blue fun- 
nel. It belonged to the "Anchises," of the Blue Fun- 
nel line, and we will live on it for three weeks, beginning 
next Wednesday. It started from Sydney a week ago, 
but we will join it at Adelaide, for which city it sails 
tonight. ... I was talking today with an in- 
telligent Australian, and he says that in three or four 
years the cost of living here has increased one-fourth, 
owing to the advancing prices for labor. ... In 
both Sydney and Melbourne, I found crowds around 
employment agencies. This surprised me ; I thought 
every man who wanted work here, had it. . . . In 
coming from Sydney by rail, we saw hundreds of piano- 
boxes along the way. Each box contained an adver- 
tisement for the Steck piano. It was a new use for 
empty piano-boxes. . . . Here, when a doctor 
charges a big fee for an operation, the newspapers make 
a fuss about it. The Sydney papers were full of a sen- 
sation of this kind the day I left there. It is a fashion 
that might be copied by American papers ; great out- 
rages are perpetrated by some doctors in the United 
States, and nothing is said about it. . . . I have 
heard a great deal about rabbits in Australia ; they are 
said to be so numerous as to be a curse. Still, while 
riding through the country yesterday on a railroad train, 
I saw two boys out hunting. One of them had three 
rabbits, and the other had four. Considering the rab- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 143 

bit stories I have heard, I thought the number quite 
modest. At another place, I saw a boy out hunting, 
and he had but one rabbit. Australia looks about as 
I expected it to look, except the rabbits. ... At 
the zoological garden in Melbourne, there is an exhibit 
labeled: "American Cats." And that's exactly what 
they are : plain cats, such as you see around an}^ Amer- 
ican home. . . . At 4 : 15 we drove to the station, 
and a quarter of an hour later left for Adelaide, capital 
of South Australia ; distance, 508 miles. The train is 
a better one than that running between Sydney and 
Melbourne, and we were told that the sleeper in which 
we had engaged berths would go through. The railroad 
is owned by the government, and the gauge is five feet 
three inches; eight and a half inches wider than our 
standard gauge. But the cars do not seem wider than 
ours, and certainly they were not so heavy. The rails 
were also light, although the train made good time. 
There was a dining-car attached, and at 6 o'clock we 
had an excellent dinner, at 96 cents each. There were 
only four others in the dining-car, and we had com- 
partments to ourselves in the sleeping-car. The com- 
partments are for two, but travel here is always light 
Saturday night, I am told. With a room to myself, 
I began almost having a good time, particularly as I 
have become accustomed to the pronunciations of the 
people, and they no longer distress me. On the dining- 
car bill of fare, this was printed : "Waiters are not per- 
mitted to accept tips, on pain of dismissal." But when 
I offered our waiter a tip, he ran the risk of dismissal, 
and took it. . . . The trainmen told me that they 
are often compelled to work sixteen hours a day, and 



144 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

that they receive a shilling an hour : that is, for a day 
of sixteen hours, $3.84. Government ownership of 
railways is certainly a mistake, so far as the men are 
concerned. The government can bluff employees easier 
than a private employer. ... I shall always re- 
member the town of Ballarat, the largest interior town 
in Australia, with a population of 40,000. It was at 
this town that I lost my luck, and a man was assigned 
to my compartment. But Adelaide's luck continued, 
and she had a compartment to herself all the way. In 
addition to having towns named for her, she is lucky 
in other ways. I never have towns named for me ; 
you never heard of a town named Ed., did you? . . . 
We passed through one section of country which seemed 
to be noted for potato-growing. I remember we reached 
it after climbing a mountain of considerable height, 
and the potato-fields continued many miles. This must 
be the best section of Australia, since the railroad did 
not run more than thirty to sixty miles from the sea, 
which supplies the few rains Australia has. But the 
country looked very dry, and the soil thin. . . . 
We see no barns on the farms ; in the United States, 
travelers remark that the barns are often huge, and the 
residences pitifully small. Possibly one explanation 
is that stock run out all winter here ; it is not necessary 
to house them, or winter-feed. But the fact remains 
that Australia has no country like the best parts of 
Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, or a 
dozen other states that might be mentioned. Aus- 
tralia somehow reminds me of California, where an ex- 
ceptionally clever people have made a great deal out 
of a semi-arid country. The farmers I know pay little 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 145 

attention to agricultural reports. The Australian 
farmers do, and greedily devour everything printed 
that concerns their business. . . . The dining-car 
in which we ate dinner has two sections : first and sec- 
ond class. We paid four shillings for dinner, and the 
second-class passengers paid two. 



Sunday, February 9. — When I awoke this morning, 
the train was running rapidly through the bleakest 
country I have seen in Australia or New Zealand. 
This is the land settlers are encouraged to "take up," 
and improve. It did not look to be worth ten dollars 
a quarter-section, but occasionally I saw a settler's 
cabin. A trainman told me that the original settler 
rarely did well, but that the man who bought him out 
for almost nothing, often did quite well. Suddenly 
we came in sight of the Murray river, the only con- 
siderable stream in Australia, and navigable for small 
boats a thousand miles above where I saw it. Soon 
after, we crossed the river at a little town, and stopped 
for breakfast. From the railroad bridge I saw several 
steamboats, and rather extensive facilities for loading 
and unloading freight. . . . Remember that in 
passing through the bleak, dry country referred to 
above, we were not fifty miles from the sea, and that 
the rainfall decreases toward the interior of the coun- 
try. . . . This morning we began seeing plenty 
of rabbits ; many times, forty or fifty were in view at 
the same time, and we are now satisfied. ... A 
gentleman on the train who lives in the Fiji Islands, 



146 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

says that not long ago there, more than thirty-six inches 
of rain fell in one day ; the government rain-gauge 
records thirty-six inches, but this filled, and ran over. 
It is a pity that the industrious Australians cannot 
have some of the rain that goes to waste in the Fiji 
Islands, where the inhabitants are shiftless. . . . 
Our first view of Adelaide was from a mountain, where 
the railroad runs. It is a city of 180,000, the capital of 
South Australia, and located on an extensive plain, 
between the sea and the mountain. Adelaide is not 
located on the sea, as I had imagined ; its shipping is 
done at Port Adelaide, twelve miles away. We reached 
the city at 10 a. m., and went to the Grand Central 
Hotel, a large, new place, but we were almost the only 
guests; at one time, we saw only two others in the 
dining-room, and never more than fifteen. The din- 
ing-room is very large and very fine, and a good or- 
chestra plays for dinner, but there are almost no guests. 
On our floor we see no one ; we have it to ourselves. 
We like the quiet, but the proprietor of the hotel must 
be suffering. We asked a waiter for an explanation, 
and he said Saturday, Sunday and Monday are usually 
quiet days. The town is much like the hotel; it is 
not crowded. Here, as elsewhere in Australia and New 
Zealand, the people are exceptionally polite. We were 
standing on the street this afternoon, somewhat con- 
fused about the proper car to take, when a policeman 
stepped up and asked if he could do anything for us. 
I do not know where the people learned their excep- 
tional politeness ; they certainly did not learn it from 
the mother country, England. ... In this dry 
country, people like to hover around the words "river" 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 147 

and "creek." In a morning paper, I looked at a list 
of to^vns, and the first three were Teimant's Creek, 
Brock's Creek, and Powell's Creek. . . . The news- 
papers here are very prosperous, as they are lately all 
over the world. Their great prosperity, I am told, has 
come within the past twenty years, and that is true 
everywhere. One Adelaide paper prints a depart- 
ment entitled: "Fifty Years Ago," a brief r6sum6 of 
events half a century old. One item reads : "A spe- 
cial harvest holiday train will leave Kapunda for Ade- 
laide on Thursday, on account of the Agricultural So- 
ciety's exhibition," etc. ; so it seems that Adelaide is 
not at all youthful. . . . An advertisement in the 
morning paper read: "Wanted — Position by bird 
scorer." . . . Over here, the word Trust, which 
we despise, is used without the slightest delicacy. The 
street railway company is unblushingly called the Tram- 
way Trust in its own announcements. And just now 
there is some excitement because the Tramway Trust, 
in a disagreement with its employees, refused to accept 
arbitration. All the papers are full of labor-trouble 
news. It seems to me that in the United States we 
do not hear half as much about labor disturbances as 
we hear here. Every workingman who is not on strike, 
is discussing one, with a view of forcing another in- 
crease in wages. But labor rioting is not as frequent 
or serious here as in the United States ; there are prac- 
tically no "scabs" to assault — it is a rare thing to find 
a working man or woman who does not belong to a 
union. 



148 TRAVEL LETTEES FROM 

Monday, February 10. — No country in the world 
makes more of parks, gardens and hospitals than Aus- 
tralia. And probably no other country makes as much 
of the Salvation Army. About the first thing I saw 
on my arrival in Adelaide was a street meeting of the 
Salvation Army, a feature of which was a good brass 
band of forty men. Two other things travelers from 
the United States will notice here : drouth and pros- 
perity. I have seen no poor people; no evidence of 
poverty — yet how dry the weather is ! In the section 
of country where I live, we have had two very dry 
summers in the past thirty-five years ; but during those 
summers the country did not look as parched as the 
country looks everywhere in Australia. . . . About 
the only vegetables we get at the hotels here are pota- 
toes, cabbage, and canned beans. Tomatoes are 
served occasionally, but they are smaller than those we 
get at home, and not so good. On the streets, we see 
many carts selling fruit, including strawberries. . . . 
The city of Adelaide and the young lady in whose honor 
it was named, are very much alike in one particular ; 
.both are very quiet. We see no crowds here : we had 
plenty of room on the train coming here, we have plenty 
of room in the hotel, and we have plenty of room on the 
streets when we ride or walk about. This afternoon 
we went riding in an automobile, and everywhere we 
found it quiet and dusty. There are no crowds on the 
street cars ; and it may be mentioned incidentally that 
the street railway system of Adelaide could not be more 
complete than it is. Qne may go to any nook or cor- 
ner of the city in a clean electric car, and one line runs 
to a seaside resort, a distance of eight or nine miles. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 149 

Fare, ten cents. All the cities in Australia have bet- 
ter street-railway accommodations than the country 
has steam-railway accommodations ; it seems to me 
that the steam railways are not as numerous or efficient 
as the country demands, whereas I have everywhere 
remarked the excellence of street railways. ... In 
the United States, the privately owned railways cross 
the country from north to south, and from east to west, 
but the government-o^vned railways have not done as 
much for Australia. Comparing Australia with the 
United States, there is no railway across the continent, 
whereas we have five or six systems ; nor is there a 
railway here crossing the continent from north to 
south. The Australian railways fringe the populous 
coast for a distance of fourteen or fifteen hundred 
miles ; they take few risks, and do not attempt to make 
fruitful districts out of arid districts, as do the pri- 
vately owned railways in the United States. Our rail- 
ways have done more to develop the country than the 
government has done. Nor do the government-owned 
railways in Australia move perishable freight more 
promptly : at many stations along the road from Syd- 
ney to Adelaide, I heard complaints because the rail- 
way company did not provide cars in which to ship 
wheat piled on the ground. And when a car is pro- 
vided, it is a small open flat-car, and does not hold 
much more than a big wagon. So far as I have been 
able to make out, railway rates are a little higher here 
than in the United States, and the service very much 
poorer. . . . We think we notice that women are 
rather better dressed in Australia than in New Zealand, 
and possibly a little better looking. ... In every 



150 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

hotel-dining room here, we are always given ice-water ; 
the waiters have heard that Americans like it. 



Tuesday, February 11. — I celebrated my arrival 
in Adelaide with a slight illness, and the hotel people 
took quite an interest in me. The manager sent his 
regards, and wanted to know how I was, and when I 
went to the bath-room I usually met the maid, who 
spoke to me by name, and hoped I was better. Hotel 
servants here always know the names of guests. Ade- 
laide took very good care of me, assisted by the maid 
on our floor. I told them that if they looked after me 
as faithfully as Mr. Adams looked after his wife on the 
"Sonoma," I should feel satisfied. Mr. Adams was 
an honor to his sex ; his wife was ill from the time she 
left Honolulu until her arrival in Sydney, and during 
all that time Mr. Adams was a marvel of devotion; 
even the women said he should really take a little rest. 
But he would never leave his wife's side except when 
the women went down to sit with her ; and even then, 
he walked about the decks in an obscure place, and 
didn't seem to be longing for pleasure or company. 
And Mr. Adams was no amateur husband; he told 
me he had been married before. There was something 
about Mr. Adams which convinced me that, had oppor- 
tunity presented, he could have played a stiff game of 
cards in the smoking-room, and bluffed his competitors 
to a standstill, but with a sick wife on his hands he 
was gentleness itself. He didn't propose to be talked 
about by the women on board, and I think he was the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 151 

hero of that particular voyage of the "Sonoma." . . . 
This has been as hot a day as I have ever experienced 
anywhere, and the tea-drinking has been enormous. 
At 4 o'clock in the afternoon we were attracted by a 
sign reading, "Strawberries and cream," and the place 
was crowded with women shoppers drinking tea. No 
one was buying ice-cream, or the "American soda- 
water" advertised, but all were drinking tea; every 
woman was served with a pot, and usually she drank 
two cups. This is the universal rule here ; tea in the 
afternoon. When we went back to the hotel, the girl 
clerk was taking her afternoon tea, which had been 
brought to her from the kitchen. By-the-way, busi- 
ness is picking up at the Grand Central ; thirty-one 
came in to luncheon today. The hotel could easily 
accommodate three hundred. All the other hotels we 
have visited have been crowded. Before I leave Ade- 
laide I must ask some one what the trouble is with the 
Grand Central. Perhaps one trouble is, it has rooms 
with baths, and other up-to-date improvements. . . . 
The best exhibit at the Adelaide zoological garden is the 
roses; I doubt if the famous rose show at Portland, 
Oregon, can show a greater variety or finer flowers. It 
seems to me that one-half of the area of Adelaide is 
taken up with parks, zoological gardens, botanical gar- 
dens, hospitals, museums, playgrounds, and other 
public utilities, and in the mountains not far away is a 
national park of thousands of acres. The people here 
do not neglect exercise or amusement. You see almost 
as many people in the parks on Monday as on Sunday. 
. . . Another peculiarity here is that in all small 
orchestras the flute is used instead of the clarinet. I 



152 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

have not heard a clarinet in Australasia, whereas every 
orchestra in the United States has one. Music is about 
the same everywhere ; we hear the same music here that 
we might hear at home, in London, Japan, India, or 
elsewhere. One evening, at dinner, the orchestra 
played "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of 
Its Own," which is heard everywhere in America, and 
we coaxed the leader to play it again, for the luxury of 
being homesick. All the hotel orchestras seem to be 
paid by the guests ; anyway, we always put something 
in a plate we find in front of the leader. . . . We 
find few American publications in Australia. The La- 
dies^ Home Journal we see in nearly all bookstores, and 
somewhere we found a real-estate agent displaying the 
Journal's pictures of houses properly and improperly 
painted. The Saturday Evening Post is seen less fre- 
quently, and the American Magazine and Cosmopolitan 
occasionally. A lady in New Zealand told me she read 
the Ladies' Home Journal regularly, and greatly ad- 
mired it, and that it is well known among the women 
of her country. We see few American books at the 
bookstores ; the bulk of them are published in Eng- 
land. . . . We are becoming tolerably tired of 
the kangaroo. Every city has a zoological garden, and 
a big collection of kangaroos. Also, a big collection 
of an animal called the Wallaby, which is so near like 
the kangaroo that a tired, hurried and indifferent trav- 
eler does not distinguish one from the other. Then 
there is the kangaroo rat, and the kangaroo idea is car- 
ried out in two or three other ways. . . . We 
Americans shouldn't laugh too heartily because Aus- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 153 

tralia was originally a penal colony. In the days prior 
to 1776, England, instead of keeping evil-doers in prison 
at home, sent them to work on the farms or plantations 
in America. After the Revolution, when convicts could 
no longer be sent to America, they were sent to Aus- 
tralia. In 1787, ten ships were sent to Australia. The 
ships contained a thousand persons, eight hundred of 
them convicts, both men and women, and the remainder 
were soldiers and marines to guard them. The fleet 
landed at the present site of Sydney, and thus that fine 
city of more than half a million people was founded. 
. . . The boomerang, of which we hear much, is a 
native Australian weapon made of hard wood. It is 
made in peculiar shape, and the black fellows (accord- 
ing to the story) throw it in such a wonderful way that 
it hits the object it is aimed at, and returns to the hand 
of the thrower. I doubt the story ; such a feat as that 
described is impossible. We have seen no native 
blacks here, and they are scarce in the interior. . . . 
The years 1839 and 1840 were years of terrible drouth 
in Australia, and cattle and sheep were killed for their 
hides and tallow. Ten years later came a drouth still 
more terrible. Then in February came a day which 
is remembered as Black Thursday. The wind had 
been blowing a hot gale for days, and somehow a fire 
started. This swept over the parched earth with re- 
lentless fury, and the country was almost burned up ; 
forest trees, farmhouses, wild animals, cattle and sheep, 
and many men, women and children, were consumed. 
When rain finally came, it came in such torrents that 
nearly everything left by the fire was swept away by 



154 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

floods. Australia has always had a battle with drouth 
and hot winds, but has steadily prospered in spite of 
these drawbacks. Its people are learning what to do, 
and what not to do, and great tracts of land formerly 
worthless are now productive. This is true every- 
where ; it is true in our own western states and terri- 
tories. In the United States the rain belt is not ex- 
tending westward, but the intelligence belt is. . . . 
The shop windows of a strange city are an interesting 
exhibit to a traveler ; they are a complete history of the 
industrial habits of the inhabitants. The most inter- 
esting window I have seen in Adelaide contains photo- 
graphs of amateur Lady Bathers. A clever genius who 
runs a bathing-house at the beach offered prizes of 
twenty guineas to the Lady Bathers receiving the great- 
est number of votes for perfection of figure. A great 
many young women who had a secret notion that they 
had Great Shapes, entered the contest, and an enter- 
prising photographer is displaying pictures of the lead- 
ing contestants. All the contestants must have visited 
the gallery and posed for pictures in bathing cos- 
tumes. All of them pose in imitation of some classic 
figure, and the result is very amusing, for an amateur 
showing her figure is quite as amusing as an amateur 
appearing in a concert or in a dramatic performance. 
Some of the figures are so bad that you wonder their 
owners ever thought they were good, and all the poses 
are so awkward that the display is extremely amusing. 
You have no doubt been familiar with contests where 
young ladies ran for prizes as the most beautiful woman, 
or the most popular woman, in town, and wondered 
that the contestants considered themselves either beau- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 155 

tiful or popular, but women running a race for per- 
fection of figure, and submitting their charms to the 
public, is a still more amazing performance. 



Wednesday, February 12. — An unusual thing in 
Australian towns is that seed stores sell a great variety 
of flowering plants ; instead of buying sweet pea 
seeds here, you buy sweet pea plants five of six inches 
high. At one store in Adelaide, I saw a dozen differ- 
ent varieties of plants put up in small bunches, and 
offered at reasonable prices. . . . Australia and 
New Zealand are very Progressive, when active and 
powerful labor unions are concerned, but not a great 
deal is done for the quiet and patient farmers ; there 
are no rural mail routes in either country. . . . 
There are more banks, trust companies, loan compa- 
nies, etc., in Australian cities, it seems to me, than else- 
where. In some sections of the large towns I see al- 
most nothing but financial institutions for blocks. . . . 
The people here not only know I am from the United 
States, but they know what section I am from. "You 
are not a New-Yorker?" a gentleman said to me this 
morning. I told him I was from Kansas. "My guess 
was Denver," he said. He came within five hundred 
miles of locating me. ... At all the hotels, we 
have noticed that the maids have false teeth. There 
is something in the water that is injurious to teeth; 
you see advertisements in the papers offering a remedy. 
In Australia, probably you see three times as many 
women v/ith full sets of false teeth as you see elsewhere. 
And dentists here are like dentists everywhere, in that 



156 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

their false teeth can always be promptly detected. . . . 
The duck-bill, interesting because it is an egg-laying 
mammal, is found in Australia. It is supposed that 
at one time all mammals were egg-laying ; later, these 
early mammals were replaced by more highly organ- 
ized descendants. The duck-bill has a bill like a duck, 
fur like a mole, webbed feet, and is about as large as a 
terrier dog. It burrows in the bank, as a muskrat does, 
and thousands of learned men have journeyed to Aus- 
tralia to see it, as an interesting and rare link in the 
chain of life. An ant-eater having a bear-like snout, 
and also an egg-laying mammal, is found in Austra- 
lia. Egg-laying mammals are found nowhere elese in 
the world. ... I have heard it said that the 
women of Australia are a year or two behind New York 
or London in the fashions. I do not know as to that, 
but it is certainly true that the shop girls in Adelaide 
are just adopting the big bunches of hair with which 
American shop girls disfigured their heads a good many 
months ago. . . . At 4 o'clock this afternoon we walked 
to the railroad station, and took a train for the Outer 
Harbor, to go on board the "Anchises." The distance 
is fourteen miles, and the train made so many stops that 
we did not get our first sight of the ship until an hour 
later. It was lying not a hundred yards from the sta- 
tion where we left the train, and we went aboard at 
once. The Outer Harbor is a lonely place; nothing 
there except a railroad station and a loading-dock. 
Most of the passengers had joined the ship at Sydney 
or Melbourne, and looked us over critically as we walked 
up the gang-plank. I found I had a large room to my- 
self, on the upper deck, and Adelaide had one just like 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 157 

it. Our baggage having been sent in the morning, we 
found it waiting for us in our rooms. There are 120 
first-class passengers ; no second-class, and no steerage. 
The ship is two years old, 508 feet long, with an un- 
usual beam (which means width, and width means 
steadiness at sea), and altogether we are well pleased. 
. . . An old gentleman and his wife attracted our 
particular attention because so many had come to see 
them off. There were many children and grandchil- 
dren, and after the whistle had warned all visitors to 
go ashore, we stood beside the old gentleman and his 
wife at the rail, looking at the crowd. A woman in the 
crowd below was evidently a married daughter of the 
old couple we admired, and she had a nurse girl with 
her, and the nurse girl was carrying a baby. 

"Mother," the married daughter called out, softly, 
"did you say good-by to Daisy?" 

Daisy was the nurse girl, and the fine old mother said 
she had said good-by to Daisy, but, to make it good 
measure, she said good-by to her again. . . . My 
room is considerably larger than the one I shared with 
three others on the "Maunganui." I have two chairs, 
a clothes closet, and a chest of drawers, all of which 
were lacking on the "Maunganui." On that ship I 
hadn't a single hook on which to hang my clothing; 
in my room on the "Anchises" there are fifteen hooks. 
If I live fifty years longer, at the end of the forty -ninth 
year I shall still be telling with indignation of my room 
on the "Maunganui." Four men in a room nine by 
ten feet is as bad as asking four men to use one bath- 
tub at the same time. ... At exactly 6 p. m. we 
got away as advertised. 



158 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Thursday, February 13. — When we awoke this 
morning, rain was falling, and a heavy sea running, but 
owing to the ship's unusual width, 60 feet, we did not 
mind the motion, and went down to breakfast in good 
humor. One of the stewards informs me that he has 
worked on many ships, and that the "Anchises" is the 
steadiest of them all. The weather is bad, but not 
many are seasick. ... A lady at our table has 
five children and two nurses with her. "And," added 
her husband, "at sea, five are quite enough." These 
children are all boys, except one, and this girl is known 
as Tom, she is such a Tom-boy. The girl knows noth- 
ing about girls, and has never played with them, and 
the mother is rather glad of it : usually a Tom-boy hu- 
miliates a mother. . . . The passengers are very 
nice; a better lot than we met on the "Maheno" or 
"Maunganui." Most of them are making the long 
journey to England. . . . We are now in the great 
Australian Bight, which, on the map, makes Austra- 
lia look upside down. The rough weather of the voy- 
age is usually encountered in the Bight. ... In 
1806, a certain Captain Bligh was appointed governor 
of Australia. This is the Bligh associated with the 
mutiny of the ship "Bounty," one of the most thrilling 
stories of the sea. Some time prior to 1806, Bligh, as 
commander of H. M. S. "Bounty," was sent to the 
South Sea Islands after trees and plants to be taken to 
the West Indies ; the English have always been noted 
for trying to improve their possessions. I have forgot- 
ten the name of the island where Bligh went with the 
"Bounty," but will call it Island No. 1. He remained 
there a considerable time; long enough for his sailors 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 159 

to become well acquainted with the natives. Finally, 
when the "Bounty" sailed for the West Indies, the 
sailors were mutinous, as they had made friends in 
Island No. 1, and did not wish to leave. Captain Bligh 
was a hard man, and, noting the discontent of the sail- 
ors, gave them extra duties ; if there was nothing else 
for them to do, he made them polish the anchor. One 
night, as Captain Bligh sat in his cabin, he was seized 
from behind by three sailors. He was bluntly told to 
get into one of the small boats, and row where he 
pleased ; the sailors said they were going back to their 
native wives and friends at Island No. 1. Seventeen 
members of the crew, including all the officers, chose 
to go with the captain, and, with a scant supply of 
water and provisions, were set adrift in an open boat. 
Captain Bligh was cruel and ill-tempered, but an able 
seaman, and, after a voyage of four thousand miles, 
landed on the coast of Java. Most of his companions 
died as a result of the hardships through which they 
passed. . . . But the history of the mutineers is 
still more interesting. They returned to Island No. 1 
in the "Bounty," and, collecting their wives and other 
particular friends among the natives, set sail for a re- 
mote island one of them knew about. I have forgotten 
the name of this island, too, though it is possibly Pit- 
cairn, but I shall call it Island No. 2. Arriving at 
Island No. 2, the "Bounty" was burned, after being 
robbed of all its guns, furniture and supplies. . . . 
The mutineers quarreled a good deal among them- 
selves ; mainly about women. Every sailor had two or 
three wives, and the natives of Island No. 1 did not get 
along very well with the natives of Island No. 2. Many 



160 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

murders were committed, and at the end of twenty 
years only two of the original mutineers remained. 
These two had scores of half-breed children, many of 
them grown. . . . One day a sailing-ship stopped 
at Island No. 2, the first seen there since the mutineers 
landed, many years before. The captain knew the 
story of the "Bounty," and rightly guessed that the two 
old sailors must have been members of the mutinous 
crew. On his return to England, he reported his dis- 
covery, and gave the authorities a chart by which the 
lonely island might be found. Soon after, a ship was 
dispatched to arrest and bring back the only two of 
the mutineers remaining. . . . After a voyage of 
months, the captain of the ship returned to England 
and made a strange report. He said he found the two 
mutineers had become preachers, and were doing won- 
derfully good work among the natives. The two old 
men had entire control of the island, and controlled it 
in the interest of decency and civilization ; having be- 
come old, the last of the mutineers had quit quarrel- 
ing over women, and were looking carefully after their 
stomachs and souis. The captain of the ship concluded 
it was best to let the two old men alone ; and the Eng- 
glish government shared his opinion. A few years 
later, the old men died, greatly to the regret of a large 
number of half-breed relatives. Captain Trask, of 
the "Sonoma," once called at Island No. 2, when in 
command of a sailing-ship, and met both of the old 
mutineers ; it was Captain Trask who told me the story 
I have briefly outlined. . . . Captain Bligh also 
had trouble as governor of Australia. He quarreled 
with nearly everybody, and finally was deposed by 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 161 

force. On his promise to return to England direct, he 
went aboard a waiting vessel ; but he broke his word, 
and sailed to Tasmania instead. There he tried to 
force the people to receive him back as governor, but 
they soon grew tired of him, and forced him to leave 
the island. The result of it all was that Captain Bligh 
was made governor of Australia again, but for only 
twenty-four hours; the king probably realized that 
Bligh was quarrelsome, and no one was punished much 
for impudence to him. Finally Bligh was made an 
admiral, and that probably satisfied him. . . . The 
early days of Australia, when Bligh was governor, were 
very rough. The convict settlers had little fear and 
no respect for anyone, and did about as they pleased. 
In those days, drunkenness and crime were rampant, 
and the only way to make money was to sell whisky, 
pistols and bowie-knives. 



Friday, February 14. — Rain fell again this morn- 
ing, but the sea is smoother, and we have an excellent 
prospect of getting out of the Bight without serious 
trouble. After passing out of the Bight we shall enter 
a section of the ocean where the air is said to be par- 
ticularly pure and invigorating ; it comes from the 
pole without contamination with land, and many old, 
nervous men come to take a whiff of it on the advice of 
physicians. . . . Every morning we are offered 
iced watermelon for breakfast. It is said to be an 
American idea, but I have never heard of it before. 
. . . Every passenger is assigned to a place in a 



162 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

lifeboat, in case of emergency. I think this is a new 
idea since the sinking of the ''Titanic." I found this 
notice in my room: "Important. — Your boat is No. 
8 port. At your earliest convenience please make your- 
self acquainted with the position of your boat station. 
The boat station numbers are marked on the prom- 
enade deck rail, immediately below each boat, and your 
boat station is there. If the emergency arises, go to 
your boat station, and submit yourself to the orders 
of the man in charge." . . . Adelaide has been as- 
signed to boat No. 2 port, so that in case of emergency 
we shall be separated ; she might land on one island, 
and I on another. I find that the gentleman and wife 
who have five children and two nurses, are also as- 
signed to my lifeboat. No. 8. But I shall not think of 
the necessity of spending days or weeks in an open 
boat with a family of five children ; it would be worse 
than my experience on the "Maunganui." . . . 
There is an Eurasian on board. He is supposed to be 
as good as anybody, but there seems to be a prejudice 
against him. An Eurasian is the son or daughter of an 
European and Asiatic; the term particularly applies 
to the offspring of natives and whites in India. Some 
of the Eurasian women are very handsome, but their 
social position is so bad that many of the more sensitive 
ones commit suicide. . . . The "Anchises" is not 
fast; its run from noon on Thursday to noon today 
was only 326 miles. The ship has one custom which 
is entirely new to me : the time is changed every time 
a watch goes off duty. At sea, the watch consists of 
the ofiicer and men in charge at any particular time. 
As a result, the time changes three or four times a day. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 163 

On most ships the clock m the companionway is set back 
or forward at midnight, and there is not another change 
for twenty-four hours. 



Saturday, February 15. — People living in a dry 
country a long way from the sea do not realize that 
it covers three-quarters of the surface of the earth. 
Ninety-six per cent of the water in the oceap is pure 
fresh water, yet so great is the bulk of sea-water that 
the total amount of salt dissolved in it, if deposited in 
a layer over the surface of the land, would make a bed 
over four hundred feet thick. . . . No one is able 
to say what is the source of the salt in the ocean. 
Probably the sea has always been salt, having become 
so when first the waters gathered on the surface of the 
globe ; but all rivers that flow over the land carry salt, 
which they have obtained from the rocks and soil, so 
the sea is probably becoming saltier all the time, just 
as some lakes without outlet are being transformed to 
salt seas. . . . Off the coast of Australia for fifty 
or a hundred miles, the sea is two hundred to four hun- 
dred feet deep, but the depth grows greater as you leave 
the land, and between Australia and Africa, in places, 
the depth is more than five and a half miles, being 
greater than the elevation of the highest land above the 
sea-level. It has been calculated that the average 
depth of the ocean is more than 12,000 feet. The 
plains of the ocean bottom are the most extensive in 
the world. Here and there these plains are relieved 
by single peaks, like Bermuda, or groups of peaks, like 



164 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

the Hawaiian Islands. . , . On the bottom of the 
ocean there is a constant rain of sediment, formed by 
the death of animals which have taken carbonate of 
lime from the waters, and built it into shells and skele- 
tons, which, when they die, falls to the sea bottom. 
The sea-bed is made of an ooze chiefly composed of 
remnants of these shells. . . . The cause of waves 
is friction of the wind. Waves rarely rise more than 
twenty or thirty feet ; waves sixty feet high have been 
noted, counting from the lowest point of the trough to 
the highest point of the crest, but this is very unusual. 
A wave of large dimensions affects the sea to a depth of 
two or three hundred feet, and may last for a long time 
after its cause has disappeared ; travelers in ships often 
run into a rough sea when the sun is shining brightly, 
and there is no wind. These big waves also cause de- 
struction on the beaches, and the shore line is always 
being worn away. ... In most parts of the earth, 
the tide rises twice each day ; every twelve hours and 
twenty-five minutes there is a high tide, with a low tide 
between. At Key West the tide rises only two or three 
feet ; in some other places the tide rises sixty feet, and 
comes in as fast as a man can run. It is believed that 
in some way the tide is caused by the moon. . . . 
The sea is more interesting than the surface of the earth, 
but its story is scarcely intelligible to those who have 
not been trained in the alphabet of zoological technical- 
ities. I read a book today about the sea, and have a 
headache from trying to understand it. All our rain 
comes from the ocean ; it is said that the evaporation 
of the Red Sea amounts to eight feet per year, owing 
to the great heat of the countries surrounding it. One 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 165 

of the most important facts that has been established 
by modern investigation of the sea is, that there is no 
region in its vast extent that is devoid of life. Strange 
animals are found at the greatest depth the trawls of 
man have penetrated, and very wonderful are some of 
the forms of life found. The three great laws of nature 
are self-protection, food, and reproduction, and here 
the sea has wonderful tales to tell. Some sea animals 
reproduce by simply dropping a piece of their body, and 
other forms of marine life are so low that we can barely 
understand that it is life. There is a fish which hides 
from enemies by shaking its fins in such a manner as to 
scatter a considerable quantity of sand over its body. 
Another fish poisons its enemies ; another gives a strong 
electric shock. Many fish are colored like the bottom of 
the sea, to escape their enemies ; others resemble sea- 
weeds. And the sea is a vast slaughter-house ; fish 
feed upon one another, and constant warfare is going 
on. The whelk attacks and devours animals as large 
as itself ; hidden in the recesses of the whelk's mouth 
there is a ribbon beset with numerous sharp little teeth, 
which, by a complicated mechanism, can be worked 
backwards and forwards in such a manner that it can 
bore a hole through very thick and dense shells ; and, 
the soft parts being reached, a tube is protruded which 
dissolves and sucks them up into the animal's stomach. 
Certain of the cuttle-fishes, as they pass slowly through 
the water from one point to another, are able to change 
the color of the skin so as to resemble the color of the 
rocks or weeds which are below them. Another very 
interesting feature presented by these animals is their 
ability to discharge suddenly a cloud of inky substance 



166 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

into the water, and are thus able to escape pursuit. 
. . . The corals are so numerous that they build 
great islands, very much as bees construct honeycomb. 
Some of these coral reefs are highly colored ; when seen 
from a boat through two or three feet of water, they 
look more like a flower-bed than a mass of animals. 
The corals are so abundant that rocky islands hun- 
dreds of miles in extent are composed of their shells 
and skeletons. . . . You have heard of the phos- 
phorescent light often seen on the surface of the sea. 
This light is caused by millions of little animals which 
emit a light, and they are so numerous that it is fre- 
quently possible to read at midnight on the deck of a 
ship. The same little animals may be seen in the water 
of your bath, if taken on shipboard at night. . . . On 
certain parts of the coast of the Samoan Islands, where 
we were a few weeks ago, the Palolo worm appears in 
great abundance in the early morning hours of one or 
two days at the beginning of the third quarter of the 
moon, in the months of October and November. As 
the worm is regarded as a very great delicacy by the 
natives, the days of its appearance are looked upon as 
the red-letter days of the year. It appears just at the 
beginning of dawn, in countless millions, on a date 
which may be accurately foretold by those familiar 
with the moon's phases. As soon as the sun appears, 
the millions of worms disappear, and are not heard of 
again until another year. . . ■ . There are fish that 
fly, as every traveler by sea can attest, and it is to 
avoid the bonito that the flying-fish leave the water. 
The bonito is able to leap fifteen feet into the air, which 
ability it acquired in pursuing its favorite food. . . . 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTEALIA, AND AFRICA. 167 

The largest existing animal, the blue whale, is found in 
the sea, and it attains the enormous length of eighty- 
six feet. Although living in the sea, the blue whales 
are air-breathers. They are able, however, to hold 
their breath for a considerable time under water. When 
they come to the surface to renew the air supply in 
their lungs, they first make a violent expiratory effort 
from the nostril, and drive a column of spray many feet 
into the air above them. This phenomenon is called 
"spouting," and whalers are thus able to locate the 
animals. The skin of whales is often beset with barna- 
cles, some species of which are found nowhere else but 
on these mammals. Parasitism is very common in the 
sea, and sometimes as many as four animals are found 
dependent on each other. , . . Some sea-water 
animals can only be induced to live in the aquarium 
when the water is kept as pure as it is in the open sea ; 
on the other hand, several of the Crustacea seem to 
flourish best in stinking and putrescent pools. . . . 
It is a fact generally accepted by learned men, that all 
animals are originally derived from ancestors that lived 
in the sea. In the birds and reptiles, as well as in the 
mammals, many things clearly indicate that their an- 
cestors in remote periods, lived in water, and not on 
dry land. And when we consult the botanists, and find 
that they agree that all plants must have had a marine 
origin also, the case for the sea being the original 
home of all living organisms may be said to be com- 
plete. . . . We cannot tell in what form life first 
appeared upon the earth. Whether the unstable living 
substance called protoplasm was in the earliest con- 
ditions of the earth formed spontaneously by the chance 



168 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

combination of its elements, or whether some germ or 
other made a hazardous journey through space from 
another planet enwrapped in the casing of a meteorite, 
are questions upon which no light has yet been thrown 
by scientific observation or speculation. The majority 
of scholars believe that life originated at the bottom of 
shallow waters, or on the surface of the seas. Several 
naturalists believe that some free-swimming form of 
jelly-fish was the ancestor, and that from this simple 
start came, by millions of years of evolution, every liv- 
ing thing. 



Sunday, February 16. — The tallest man I have ever 
seen in private life turns out to be a clergyman of the 
Church of England, and early this morning he con- 
ducted holy communion in the music-room, which was 
attended by about a dozen women. At 11 a. m. he 
held another service, which attracted twenty-five or 
thirty. Both services were announced by tolling the 
diimer-gong like a church-bell. We call the tall man 
our pastor, and he will seem quite like it after we have 
been associated with him all the way to Durban. I 
have spent Sunday on three other ships, but no re- 
ligious services were held. . . . Every English- 
man, before he has known an American long, refers 
to the amusing manner in which Americans eat green 
corn off the cob. I suppose that seeing a room full of 
Americans eating corn off the cob is a funny sight that 
only foreigners can appreciate. An Englishman who 
sits at our table, and who lives at Johannesburg, says 
roasting-ears are widely grown in South Africa, and that 



ISTEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 169 

Englishmen there eat them in American fashion. In 
Australia, I noted that green corn is sold in fruit stores, 
as a rarity ; I never saw it at the vegetable markets, or 
in the grocery stores. Australian and New Zealand 
gardeners do not raise the variety of vegetables we 
have in the United States. . . . There are fifteen 
children and a phonograph on board, so we do not lack 
for noise. The children are better behaved than Amer- 
ican children, and under more control ; the phonograph 
is of American make, a Victor, with wooden horn. 
There are five nurses with the children ; one of them 
is employed by the tall clergyman. American clergy- 
men are not so prosperous, as a rule, that they travel 
with nurses. . . . It is so dull on board that last 
evening the passengers went down to dinner at seven 
o'clock, and remained at the tables until 8 : 10. The 
"Anchises" is introducing an innovation which pleases 
me : it gives the passengers better rooms, and less to 
eat. We have plenty, but on some ships there is so 
much to eat that the passengers are tempted beyond 
resistance, and eat too much. . . . We have been 
passing the western point of Australia today, and the 
sea has been rough. But the "Anchises" has such a 
gentlemanly roll that we do not mind it. The ship has 
ten thousand tons of cargo in its hold, and carmot skip 
about as do ships lightly loaded. From Adelaide to 
Albany, the western point of Australia, there is no 
railroad. The distance is twelve or fourteen hundred 
miles. Had the government kept out of the railroad 
business, private capital would have built that gap 
long ago, and passengers from Australia to South 
Africa might avoid four days of sea-travel. We fol- 



170 TKAVEL LETTERS FROM 

lowed the ship by rail from Sydney, and would have fol- 
lowed it to Albany, had there been a railroad to that 
place from Adelaide. . . . The weather has been 
chilly, but the latter part of this week we will run into 
warm weather, which will continue until we reach 
home. As a result of the raw, chilly weather, and no 
heat anywhere on the ship, I had a siege with neuralgia, 
an entirely new experience for me. The only thing to 
do was to go to bed and cover up well, with a hot-water 
bag to my jaw. Fortunately I have the best steward 
I have ever drawn on a ship, and he paid me a good 
deal of attention. ... A young Englishman who 
sits at our table tells a terrible story of Business. He 
says that in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he lives, 
he is often compelled to take thirty drinks a day, or 
lose trade. I would like to tell him what I think of 
the statement, but do not care to start a row on board. 
Any man who says he is forced to drink intoxicants or 
lose trade, tells a silly falsehood. A drinking man 
usually admires a man who doesn't drink. The men 
who have been most successful in business have not 
been noted as boozers. But while I didn't tell the 
young man what I thought of his statement, an elderly 
Englishman did. "The Americans," the elderly Eng- 
lishman said, "are the smartest business men in the 
world, and they do not drink as much as we do. And 
the drinking habit in America is becoming more un- 
popular every day, and will finally become disrepu- 
table." I have noticed that while most Englishmen 
"pick" at Americans, they really have a high opinion 
of them. ... I have spent part of the day read- 
ing a book entitled, "Around Cape Horn." It is a com- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 171 

mon sailor's experience in sailing from San Francisco 
to Liverpool. For weeks the ship had terrible weather ; 
it seemed that wreck was inevitable almost every hour 
of the voyage. I am of the opinion that the writer 
made the voyage much worse than it really was, in 
order that he might have a tale that would appeal to 
publishers. I have spent many weeks at sea, on many 
ships, but have never experienced any of the rough 
weather this writer tells about. I have experienced 
much disagreeable weather at sea, but I have never 
seen a ship in any danger of swamping. The stories of 
storms at sea remind me of stories of battles. There 
will be a perfect rain of shot and shell ; pandemonium 
will reign, and, from the book account, it would seem 
that not a single man could live to tell the tale. But 
when the casualties are listed, it is found that only two 
men were slightly wounded. What a terrific affair 
the Battle of Manila Bay was! Yet not a single man 
in Admiral Dewey's fleet was struck by shot or shell, 
although the engagement lasted for hours. . . . 
The man who has a wife and five children, and two 
nurses, on board, was talking to me today. 

"I suppose you have heard," he said, "that a young 
man may marry, and his expenses will be less than be- 
fore ; in short, that two may live on less than one? " 

I replied that I had heard the story. 

"Well," he said, "there is nothing in it." 

From noon yesterday until noon today, the ship's 
run was only 312 miles. There was once a famous 
American sailing-ship, the "Red Jacket," which did 
a better average than that for ten consecutive days. 
But it must have had a great run of luck. Sailing- 



172 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

ships often make less than a hundred miles a day, and, 
when the wind is very unfavorable, lose in twenty-four 
hours all they have made in three or four days. . . . 
We are followed every day by the albatross : great 
birds which sail for hours against the wind without 
moving a wing. The sailors say that the young, after 
reaching a certain age, and being made very fat, are 
deserted by their parents, and have nothing to eat for 
six months. At the end of that time they are able to 
fly, and seek food for themselves. ... In the 
smoking-room today I heard a man say that every 
vicious person may be detected by looking at his ears. 
If the tops of his ears are as low as his eyes, look out 
for him ; he is dangerous. 



Monday, February 17. — The manner in which the 
male passengers on ships drink coffee in the smoking- 
room, after dinner, has been getting on my nerves; 
but just as I was working up a fine case of indignation, 
I found the custom did not prevail on the "Anchises." 
On this ship those men who wish coffee after dinner, 
drink it in the dining-room, and none is served in the 
smoking-room. You cannot realize how unusual this 
new rule is unless you have seen the smoking-rooms of 
many ships filled with men drinking coffee after dinner. 
I wonder the captain of the " Anchises" dared order the 
change, but I have not heard any complaints. . . . 
Among our acquaintances are a Mr. and Mrs. Steele, 
of Sydney. Mr. Steele has been married twice, and 
talks a good deal about his daughter in London, and 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 173 

his son in Philadelphia. Some widowers who have 
married again, speak of "our" children, while others 
say "my" children; just as some men who have been 
married twice are always talking about it, while others 
keep quiet, and let you find out about their second 
marriage if you can. I don't think Mrs. Steele likes 
the manner in which he talks about his son in Phila- 
delphia, and his daughter in London, preferring that 
he say "our" son in Philadelphia and "our" daughter 
in London. Stepchildren also amuse me ; they try so 
hard to show respect for pa's new wife, or ma's new hus- 
band, and fail so lamentably. There is always some- 
thing unusual in a second marriage. . . . This is 
our sixth full day on the " Anchises." Had we been on a 
fast boat on the Atlantic, we should be landing to- 
morrow. But this is a long trip, and we are only fairly 
getting started : we shall not land at Durban until a 
week from next Monday. Those who came on at Syd- 
ney have already been on board fifteen days, and, if 
they are going to Liverpool, they still have thirty-two 
days of it. A gentleman and his wife who are at our 
table came on board at Melbourne, and they will be on 
board forty-seven days. . . . Every woman in 
Australia and New Zealand wears a bracelet watch ; 
the custom seems to be universal. In the United 
States women wear watches attached to chains of one 
shape or another, but here it is a universal custom for 
women to wear watches set in a bracelet on the left 
wrist. ... I believe this is the dullest trip I have 
ever undertaken, and almost scream with horror when 
I realize that I shall not see land for another thirteen 
days. Fortunately we have not been seasick; the 



174 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

"Anchises" is a wonderfully steady boat. But it is 
as dull on board as on a back street in a country town. 
Part of the passengers sit on one side of the main deck 
and part on the other, while some of them sit on the 
upper or boat deck. All of us walk about a good deal 
for exercise, and I think we tire of seeing each other go 
'round and 'round. One restless woman is going most 
of the time, and I often hear the others growl: "If 
that woman would only sit down!" I fear we shall en- 
gage in fist fights before we reach Durban. . . . 
Two highly respectable spinsters from Australia have 
attracted my attention. On deck and in the dining- 
room they are so well behaved that I marvel at them ; 
but this afternoon they became desperate, and left their 
side of the deck and came over to our side. And at din- 
ner tonight I saw the bolder one looking about the din- 
ing-room, hoping to see something to talk about. If 
these highly respectable women are becoming reckless 
at the end of six days, what will they be doing in thirteen 
days more? . . A Sports Committee was or- 

ganized today, to Keep Something Going On. But 
ship games are about as uninteresting as a Salvation 
Army street service. A subscription was taken up, 
to raise money with which to buy prizes for the winners 
of the games, and I heard it hinted that the promoters 
expect others to do the giving. There was no great de- 
mand for Sports, except in the minds of three or four 
men. It's a good deal that way on land when a cele- 
bration is held, or a new church built, or money raised 
for a Y. M. C. A. building. I predict that the Sports 
Committee will not greatly relieve the dullness. One 
of the games is a special form of cricket arranged for 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 175 

the sea. A regular game of cricket is so dull that some 
of our most noted humorists have laughed at it, but 
sea cricket is much worse. . . .1 was talking to- 
day with an Englishman who has lived in Australia a 
long time, and who married an Australian woman. 
He says it pleases Australians to be told they are like 
Americans, and it makes them very angry to be told 
that they are like the English, He confirms what I 
have noticed everywhere ; that Australians and New- 
Zealanders "pick" at the English constantly. , . . 
I am beginning to believe I can see a difference between 
the colonists and the English, although I couldn't at 
first. A woman today told me of her troubles with ser- 
vants in Australia, and her troubles are exactly like 
those I hear women complain of at home. There are 
English nurse girls and Australian nurse girls on board, 
but they do not mix. The English girls wear nurses' 
costumes, but the Australian girls say that is beneath 
their dignity. One of these Australian nurse girls is not 
more than twenty years old, and has a full set of false 
teeth. There are many "American dentists" in Aus- 
tralia (one was shot by his office girl in Melbourne while 
I was there), and I judge they have a great deal to do. 



Tuesday, February 18. — I read a good deal, as the 
ship has an excellent library; frequently I take out 
two books a day. One I read this morning is entitled, 
"The Cruise of the 'Falcon.' " In 1880, an English- 
man named E. F. Knight conceived the notion of tak- 
ing a long voyage in a small yacht called the "Falcon." 



176 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

The vessel was only forty-two feet long and thirteen 
feet wide, yet he cruised in it for twenty months, going 
from England to South America, and thence to the 
West Indies, where he sold his boat, and took a steamer 
home. The crew consisted of Knight and three friends, 
and a boy. One of these friends, Jerdein, had been an 
officer on a P. & O. liner, and was a skilled navigator 
and seaman, while Knight was an amateur yachtsman 
of considerable experience; but the other two, An- 
drews and Arnand, were landlubbers. The boy was 
fifteen years old, and had been to sea several times. 
On the way to South America they stopped at several 
islands, and had a prosperous and agreeable voyage. 
Their undertaking was thought to be a foolhardy one, 
and the newspapers at the time devoted much space 
to the voyage, but the little "Falcon" turned out to 
be quite fast, and rode the seas well; two thousand 
miles were made in ten consecutive days off the coast 
of South America. Five months were devoted to a 
trip up the Parana and Paraguay rivers. At Buenos 
Aires, Jerdein, Andrews and Arnand concluded that 
they had had enough of it, and quit the little boat. 
' Knight was not discouraged, and hired three Italian 
sailors, in addition to the boy. With these he put to 
sea, and had a very rough voyage. . . . There are 
two islands called Trinidad ; one of them in the West 
Indies, and the other off the coast of lower South Amer- 
ica. Knight determined to visit the latter island, and 
had a very remarkable experience. The landing was 
bad, and he found the island an unwholesome and in- 
hospitable place. At one spot on the island he found 
a great lot of wreckage; it looked as though many 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 177 

foundered ships had drifted in there and gone to pieces. 
He believed treasure might be found in the wreckage, 
but the weather was stormy, and he did not know what 
moment the "Falcon" might be compelled to sail away 
for safety, so he gave up the treasure, and left the island, 
where he spent three or four very uncomfortable days. 
From Trinidad he went to Bahia, and to the Amazon, 
meeting with all sorts of adventures, finally landing 
at Barbadoes, where he sold the "Falcon," and sailed 
for home on a steamship. ... I suppose Knight 
elaborated his dangers and adventures ; talkers do this, 
and I see no reason why writers should not. Many of 
his most remarkable stories he had second-hand ; the 
wonderful incidents recorded happened a day, or a 
week, or a month, after he arrived at certain places. 
This is true of most very remarkable circumstances; 
the narrators do not say they witnessed them, but gen- 
tlemen they had every reason to believe truthful told 
them the stories, etc. Dozens of men have told me of 
the famous pilot-fish of New Zealand, which pilots all 
ships through a certain channel. None of these gentle- 
men have actually seen the pilot-fish at work, but they 
met a gentleman only last week, or the week before, 
who had seen it. By-the-way, a recent Sydney paper 
says the famous pilot-fish has not been seen in six 
months ; it is feared that he has been killed by the 
crew of some whaling-ship. . . . Another favor- 
ite story is of the fogs in London, yet I have never seen 
anyone who has witnessed one of these fogs. And the 
Scientific American stated not long ago that the old- 
fashioned London fog has disappeared ; that one has 
not been seen in a good many years. . . . Speak- 



178 TRAVEL LETTEES FROM 

ing of whalers, it is generally agreed that in the old 
days when that industry was flourishing and profitable, 
the Yankees were the smartest men at the business. 
Indeed, when an English firm built and equipped a 
whaling-ship, Yankees were employed to teach the 
English crew the business. I have been grumbling 
a little because of this voyage of nineteen days. The 
old whalers used to be gone three years on their voy- 
ages ; sometimes they did not see land for ten months 
at a time. Capturing a whale was as dangerous as a 
naval battle. The sailors went after it in small boats, 
and a whale was rarely captured under six or seven 
hours. . . . The sea is supposed to be very dan- 
gerous. As a matter of fact, a sea voyage is not as 
dangerous as a railroad journey. Take a hundred 
thousand people who travel a given number of hours 
by rail, and compare them with a hundred thousand 
who travel a like number of hours by sea, and those 
traveling by sea will have very much the best of it, so 
far as safety is concerned. Indeed, going to sea is 
safer than staying at home. Ever remark the great 
ijumber of people who are killed around home? The 
newspapers are full of dreadful accidents occurring in 
quiet, rural communities where life is supposed to be 
particularly safe. Every time a farmer hitches up 
a team, he runs a risk. A buggy-ride is dangerous; 
the hold-back straps are liable to break, in going down 
hill; and a buggy running onto the heels of a horse 
is almost sure to cause an accident. And public streets 
and roads are more dangerous than ever since auto- 
mobiles became so numerous. ... In seacoast 
towns everywhere may be seen thousands of old men 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 179 

who have spent their lives at sea almost without acci- 
dent. An insurance company regards a seaman as a 
safe risk ; as safe as a farmer. It isn't the danger that 
should keep you off the sea ; it is seasickness, and four 
in a room 9x10 feet. Nor is it the expense that should 
keep you off the sea. For this voyage of practically 
twenty days I pay $150; or $7.50 a day. It would 
cost that at a New York hotel for room and board. 
And there are sea voyages much cheaper than this one : 
there is a White Star boat running between Sydney and 
London, by way of South Africa, which charges about 
$5 a day for the journey. It combines first, second 
and third class into one class, but is said to be very 
fair. 



Wednesday, February 19. — We are the only Amer- 
icans on board the "Anchises," although a passenger 
from London once met an American who lived in 
Connecticut. The Londoner asked me today if I knew 
his Connecticut friend. I was compelled to confess 
I did not know him, although the London man said his 
friend was one of the prominent men of that part of the 
world. ... It seems we are not a musical crowd ; 
although a concert has been announced for the night 
before we reach Durban, there is no one to play the 
piano. I suggested to a member of the Sports Commit- 
tee that some of us might learn, as we would have ample 
time, but he did not believe my scheme practical. A 
man on board has a graphophone, \^dth sixty records, 
and this is going a good deal. Last night he loaned the 
machine to his nurse girl, and she gave a concert on the 



180 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

lower deck for the benefit of the crew. One of the fire- 
men plays the violin, and the laundry girls, stewardesses 
and nurse girls danced with members of the crew. It 
was a bright moonlight night, and this social event at- 
tracted more attention than anything else we have had 
on board. There was a euchre tournament in the smok- 
ing-room, but it did not attract as much attention as the 
dance. Euchre is called a "nigger's game" here; it 
is said to be so simple that niggers can learn it. . . . 
Women are in the smoking-room of the ''Anchises" 
constantly, but some captains do not allow this : they 
say the smoking-room is for men, and that if women 
are allowed in the room, some of the men will keep out. 
. . . The Eurasian on board speaks no English, 
and, in addition, has had toothache for more than a 
week. Toothache is one of the dangers of the sea. 
Captain Trask told me that he once suffered seven weeks 
with toothache, when on a sailing-ship, and was not free 
from pain a moment during all that time. On a sailing- 
ship there is no doctor ; the captain doctors the sailors 
when they become ill, and usually he doesn't know 
DEiuch about medicine. . . . We have had an un- 
usually smooth sea today, but the weather has been 
cloudy ; we have not had a clear day since leaving 
Adelaide, although the sun occasionally shows itself for 
a short time. . . . The English people are as crazy 
about cricket as Americans are about baseball. A man 
who attends all cricket games, and knows all the fine 
points, is called a "barracker." But he does not abuse 
the players, as do our baseball fans; a "barracker" 
seems to be more of a gentleman than a ''fan." . . . 
I don't believe I look at the sea more than once a day ; 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 181 

usually, when I get up in the morning, I look out the 
window, and remark that the sea is smoother or rougher 
than yesterday, but that is about all. I have never 
seen anything beautiful or unusual at sea, except one 
evening when on the "Sonoma." I was leaning over 
the rail forward, as the sun was setting. The rays of 
the setting sun were reflected in the waves rolled up 
by the prow of the ship ; I could see all the colors of 
the rainbow, and the effect was very unusual and beau- 
tiful. But as a rule, the sea is never majestic, though 
it is frequently what the English call "nasty." . . . 
This is our seventh day out, and we have not seen a sail 
or ship. One day we saw a black spot which might 
have been smoke from a steamer, but that is all. Even 
the albatross have deserted us, and we are as lonely as 
lonely can be. The members of the Sports Committee 
are working hard to Keep Something Going On, but 
they are not meeting with any great success. It is 
amusing to see them hunt up players for the different 
games. The head of the Sports Committee is a fine 
old gentleman named Irons, a friend of ours, and we 
find a good deal of amusement in watching him worry 
around like the man who proposed a picnic which isn't 
going very well. We try to take the Sports Committee 
seriously, since the other passengers would probably 
think us "funny" if we did not (if they do not already 
entertain that suspicion), but as a matter of fact the 
Sports Committee is a joke to us. "Well," one mem- 
ber of the committee said to me this evening, "it has 
been a strenuous day." I thought it the dullest day 
I ever experienced anywhere. We hear this evening 
that our friend Mr. Irons, head of the Sports Commit- 



182 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

tee, is in bed as a result of the excitement of the day, 
and we are laughing at him, in which his wife joins us. 
. . . It is at least clean at sea ; no dust and no dirt. 
If it were not for the idea of it, you might wear a collar 
a week at sea Somewhere out in this wilder- 
ness there is said to be a large island where the women 
greatly outnumber the men; of six hundred adults, 
five hundred are women. I have forgotten the name 
of the place, but I have heard the men talk about it a 
good deal. Oh this island, the men do nothing, and the 
women wait upon them with great cheerfulness. A 
man is at liberty to have as many wives as he plea.ses ; 
the men tell very amusing stories about life on the 
island, and usually they tell them in the presence of the 
women, to adorn a moral. This paradise for men is 
known in a general way as "The Island," and I am of 
the opinion that it is an invention of some man who has 
dreamed of such a place, after being imposed upon a 
good deal by women and girls. 



Thursday, February 20. — In Australia, what we 
call a tramp is known as a "Sundowner," because of his 
habit of appearing at sundown, and asking for a night's 
entertainment. . . . The best thing we have to 
eat on the ship is oatmeal, which is served every morn- 
ing for breakfast. I have been neglecting this nutri- 
tious and palatable food for years, having drifted off to 
new breakfast foods extensively advertised, but I shall 
drift back to the Old Reliable, as I find it surprisingly 
good. . . . Opposite me on deck today sat a woman 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 183 

reading an English magazine. On the front cover was 
an advertisement of "Black and White" whisky. The 
magazine was about the size of our Ladies^ Home Jour- 
nal; imagine that fine publication wdth a whisky ad- 
vertisement occupying two-thirds of the front cover 
page. ... A passenger named Grice was telling 
this morning of an uncomfortable experience. He was 
riding after cattle on the plains of Australia, when his 
horse fell over an ant-hill. The horse broke its neck, 
and fell on the man in such a way as to pin him to the 
ground. After six or seven hours, help arrived. There 
was no surgeon in the district, and the man was carried 
to Melbourne, 180 miles. Here he was operated on 
seven times, and is just out of the hospital, where he 
spent eight months. He is on his way to Mombasa, 
in Africa, to hunt. When surgeons and hospitals are 
mentioned, I find that the Mayos, of Rochester, Minne- 
sota, are known everywhere. ... I have heard 
that some men, when they return from a long trip 
abroad, are very conceited about it, and talk too much 
of their experiences. In case I am so fortunate as to 
return from this trip, I shall be very modest, and greatly 
admire those who had sense enough to remain at home. 
How I admire Uncle Bruce, of Potato Hill farm, who 
has nothing to do this winter except haul manure from 
town for his next year's crop! What good things he 
has to eat down at the farm-house! And what an ap- 
petite he has! I wish I could change places with him. 
For dinner today we had venison and pheasant, but 
they tasted like leather. Game kept a long time isn't fit 
to eat. . . . Last night there was a dance on deck, 
and members of the Sports Committee were indignant 



184 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

because of the small attendance. "We have worked 
hard to provide amusement/' they said, "and almost no 
one is dancing." It has probably never occurred to the 
members of the Sports Committee that they are a 
nuisance rather than a blessing. It would be very 
much pleasanter on board if a Gay Time had never 
been thought of. I do not care to dance ; nor do I care 
to have members of the Sports Committee urge me 
to dance. If I care to play quoits, or any other of the 
deck games, I do not need a Sports Committee to urge 
me. The members of the Sports Committee think it 
an outrage that Adelaide does not dance, and look at 
me reproachfully. I tell them I had nothing to do 
with it ; that her parents are church members, and do 
not believe in dancing. This also greatly astonishes 
them. It wouldn't surprise me if the members of the 
Sports Committee did not finally get into trouble with 
some of the other passengers who want to be let alone. 
I hear a good deal of grumbling in the smoking-room 
from men who are being constantly urged to dance, 
take part in the concert, play skittles, or quoits, or 
deck billiards, or sea croquet. The members of the 
Sports Committee remind me of five or six men who 
decide that a town needs another lodge, and bore all the 
other citizens to join. Wherever you go, on land or 
sea, you find impudent men who urge others to do 
things there is no necessity for doing. Our pastor, the 
tall clergyman heretofore mentioned, is far more con- 
siderate of us than members of the Sports Committee. 
Sunday morning he sends a steward about the deck 
tolling a gong, to give notice that religious services will 
shortly be held in the music-room ; but those who do 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 185 

not care to attend are not reprimanded by the holy man 
for absence. I thoroughly dislike a man who is forever 
protesting because others do not accept his notions, or 
admire whatever he happens to admire. Always re- 
member that what you regard as the greatest thing 
in the world may be regarded as the most useless by 
many worthy and intelligent people. 



Friday, February 21. — On this ship are eighteen 
thousand frozen sheep carcasses, en route from Aus- 
tralia to London. In order to keep this meat prop- 
erly, great refrigerators are necessary. This frozen- 
meat trade is the source of Australia's prosperity ; be- 
fore it was inaugurated, Australian sheep were not 
worth much except for their wool and tallow; old- 
timers in Australia remember when a sheep carcass 
might be bought for a shilling. This frozen-meat trade 
is also carried on between South America and Eng- 
land, and the result is that the English have cheap 
meat. The people of the United States might have 
cheap meat, also, were it not for the tariff. Our ad- 
miration for the farmer is so great that we pay a third 
or half more for meat than is necessary, in order that 
the farmer may receive high prices for his live-stock. 
When an American goes to a meat market, would he 
cheerfully pay thirty cents instead of twenty for a piece 
of meat were it not for his Statesmen? I have always 
doubted that the people see the advantage of a high 
tariff ; it is the Statesmen who are able to figure it out. 
. . . The men who thought of the frozen-meat 



186 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

scheme did a lot for humanity, but probably no one 
knows who they are ; hundreds of men had a little to 
do with it. . . . The captain says a ship loaded 
with frozen meat arrives in England from Australia 
or South America every day of the year. . . . The 
"Anchises," on its last voyage out to Australia, was 
in a great storm in the Bay of Biscay, and the ship's 
doctor was seasick four days. ''Tell me," I said to the 
doctor today, "how a big storm at sea looks." "Blessed 
if I know," he replied; "I was sick in bed; I didn't 
see anything of it." . . . My dining-room steward 
says the captain is always sick for a day or two after 
leaving port, but the other ship employees deny this. 
They say that on leaving port the captain has his 
meals served in his room, which is near the bridge, and 
thus the story of seasickness started. . . . We have 
had a bad sea all day, with drizzling rain. Not many 
are sick, owing to the ship's unusual steadiness. It 
rolls and pitches, but gently, and I wonder the "An- 
chises" is not famous the world over for its unusual 
sea-going qualities. Some ships cut up at sea, how- 
ever carefully they were built, while occasionally one 
will prove unusually steady. The "Maunganui" was 
a big ship, and very handsome, but it had a certain 
little movement of its own that was atrocious. While 
lying in my bed, the ship came up under me in such a 
way as to make me feel as though I were hanging on a 
clothesline, with the back of my head dangling against 
my heels. . . . The English have many customs 
and pronunciations I do not understand. How much 
do you suppose a hundredweight is in England? Not 
a hundred pounds, but a hundred and twelve pounds. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 187 

A ton, consequently, is not 2,000 pounds, but 2,240 
pounds ; and this system bothers every country with 
which England does business. The English also use 
the term guinea in reckoning money, although there is 
no such coin, nor is English paper money issued in 
guineas. A guinea is as much more than S5 as a pound 
is less. If the people of the United States should in- 
vent a slang term meaning $1.03, and occasionally use 
it in reckoning money, instead of the dollar, it would 
be about the same thing as the English custom of occa- 
sionally dragging out the word guinea, and using it, 
to confuse strangers. . . . Some Americans say, 
"Don't you know?" in conversation, and it is a very 
bad habit, since the term is meaningless, and soon gets 
on the nerves of the listener. The English make fun 
of the expression, and represent all Americans as say- 
ing "Don't you know?" It is a fact that too many 
of them do. But Australians add, "You see" to their 
statements a great deal. I believe a majority of the 
Australians say " Yis," instead of "Yes," and they have 
many other oddities of speech which grate on the 
nerves of Americans, who believe in pure as well as free 
speech. . . . On a rough night, the squeaks in a 
ship sleeping-room are worth mentioning. Last night 
as I lay in bed, I made note of the squeaks, and could 
distinctly count four different ones : two for each 
pitch, and two for each roll. When the weather is 
fine, there is no strain on the ship, and the squeaks dis- 
appear. . . . This morning at 10 o'clock the cap- 
tain made a calculation, and said the time in Atchison 
was 10 p. M. Thursday night. He showed me how he 
figured it. Atchison is in 96 degrees longitude ; there- 



188 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

fore it is six hours and twenty-four minutes behind 
Greenwich time. The ship today is in 80 degrees longi- 
tude, and therefore five hours and twenty minutes 
ahead of Greenwich. To be exact, the difference in 
time between Atchison and the position of the ship 
today is eleven hours and forty-four minutes. . . . 
The lady who has five children and two nurses on board 
says that babies should be made to mind when six 
months old. I told her that in America we did not 
begin spanking that young ; that our rule was to spank 
girl babies at eight months, and boy babies at one year. 
. . . Which recalls the fact that I have lately been 
reading R. A. Wallace's "Malay Archipelago." Wal- 
lace spent several years in that section in hunting the 
ora,ng-utan, the monkey-like animal which is most like 
man. One day he killed an adult female, and found 
that it had a baby six or seven weeks old. This he 
tried to raise, hoping to present it to the British Mu- 
seum. He found the baby orang-utan very much like 
a human baby. It cried for food, or when uncomfort- 
able, and became so badly spoilt that he was com- 
pelled to spank it when it became four or five months 
old. Unfortunately the little orang-utan contracted 
an illness about this time, and all Professor Wallace 
could do was not sufficient to save its life. 



Saturday, February 22. — A howling gale has been 
raging all day. On the upper deck this afternoon, many 
of the passengers were soaked by a wave which came 
aboard. The wind is following us, and pushing the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRA.LIA, AND AFRICA. 189 

ship along ; the sailors say that a head-wind would have 
resulted in as bad a day as is usually seen at sea. The 
decks are slippery, and those who go out are in constant 
danger of being soaked with spray. For a wonder, I am 
not seasick, and spent my time talking with passengers 
who have visited strange places. One man lived for a 
time in one of the remote islands of the Malay archi- 
pelago, where the natives wear very little clothing, and 
he says the men have the handsomest figures he has 
ever seen; that the marble figures in art galleries do 
not equal living examples in Borneo. The figures of 
the men are much superior to the figures of the women. 
Occasionally a very young girl will have a good figure, 
but never equal to a boy of the same age; men of 
thirty have splendid figures, whereas women of that 
age have no figures at all. . . . A bird known as 
the hornbill is found in Borneo. When the female has 
laid a sufficient number of eggs, the male seals her up 
in the nest, which is in a hollow tree, and compels her 
to sit until germination takes place. While the fe- 
male is a prisoner, the male feeds her faithfully. An- 
other bird deposits its eggs in a pile, covers them over 
with sand, and leaves hatching to the sun. A half- 
dozen hens will place their eggs in the same pile. When 
the eggs are hatched, the young are immediately able 
to look after themselves. ... In some of the 
islands of the archipelago there are no judges, courts, 
or policemen, yet the natives are well behaved, and 
crime is almost unknown. This, my informant says, 
is probably the natural state of man ; wherever crime 
is rampant among savages, it has usually been intro- 
duced by members of civilized races. In a state of 



190 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

nature, a man soon learns that if he expects his rights, 
he must respect the rights of others; therefore if he 
desires peaceable possession of his house, or his cattle, 
or his wives, he must respect the property rights of 
others. Crime seems to be the product of civilization, 
and not of savagery. . . . Captain Warrall says 
there is nothing in the story that he becomes seasick 
every time he leaves port. But he says it is a fact that 
when he goes to sea after a long stay on land, he suffers 
with a headache for several hours. This headache is 
due to the motion of the ship, and he believes most 
sea-going men are affected in the same way. The 
second engineer told me he had the same experience 
as the captain, and my room steward says that on leav- 
ing London or Sydney he always gets a headache, which 
does not entirely disappear until the second day out. 
. . . In the old days when I was a reporter on the 
Atchison Globe, I thought it a good item when I found 
a farmer's boy with forty rabbits. I found a better 
rabbit story than that today. On this ship are one 
hundred and eighty thousand frozen rabbits, en route 
for London, every one of them trapped. Rabbits in our 
country are ruined by being shot; we have never 
learned the art of trapping them. I have been familiar 
with rabbits all my life, but never knew a man who 
could trap them. In Australia, rabbit-catching is a 
trade, and the rabbit-catchers have a union, which was 
raising quite a disturbance while I was there, by threat- 
ening a strike. The rabbits caught in Australia and 
shipped to England bring in a tremendous sum of 
money annually ; I have forgotten the figures, but the 
total is enormous. Rabbits were imported into Aus- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 191 

tralia by members of an energetic Sports Committee. 
In the early days certain of the citizens of Australia 
said : "Our people have no amusement ; let us import 
rabbits from England, that there may be something to 
hunt." So a Sports Committee was formed, and mem- 
bers of it held public meetings, and passed subscrip- 
tion papers, and abused those who did not give. As a 
result of it all, rabbits were imported from England, 
and they are now a far greater pest than English spar- 
rows are in the United States. 



Sunday, February 23. — Our tall pastor conducted 
Holy Communion services at 7 o'clock this morning, 
in the music-room. There were four present : the 
pastor, his wife, his nurse maid, and myself. I am a 
very early riser, and this service was the only thing going 
on ; besides, I nearly always sympathize with a small 
attendance. Our pastor carries two uniforms with 
him ; a white one fringed with black, and another en- 
tirely of black, which he wore this morning. I am in- 
clined to believe that he is Low Church. The most 
animated and vicious church row I was ever familiar 
with started because a certain pastor insisted on using 
wafers in his communion service, whereas a bossy 
woman in the congregation preferred bread. Bread 
is Low Church ; wafers represent the High, I am told. 
. . . Although only three persons attended the 
communion service, out of a total of possibly three 
hundred on the ship, our pastor does not go around 
making sneering remarks about his efforts not being 



192 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

appreciated, as do members of the Sports Committee. 
I am inclined to believe that the tall pastor is right. 
The communion service was advertised by posting no- 
tice of it on the bulletin board. The passengers know 
about hell, and about its rewards offered by the church ; 
the pastor is quite right in letting them alone. As old- 
fashioned children used to say, you can lead a horse to 
water, but you can't make him drink. . . . We feel 
tonight that we are almost within sight of Durban ; we 
are still more than two thousand miles away, but we 
should be there in six more days, and we shall not mind 
the last two or three, in making preparations to land. 
The sun came out this afternoon, and the sea is 
smoother, so that we are all feeling better. . . . 
Back of the smoking-room there is a balcony where the 
passengers often sit. The young engineers also come up 
from the deck below, and sit in the balcony at times, 
when off duty. I have become acquainted with a num- 
ber of them, and ask them questions about the sea. 
They explained to me where the Pacific ocean ends, and 
the Indian ocean begins. The line is somewhere in the 
vicinity of Melbourne, so that Australia is partly in 
the Indian ocean and partly in the Pacific. Flowing 
eastward from Africa, there is a great current. After 
reaching the vicinity of Melbourne and Tasmania 
the current turns, and flows westward five or six thou- 
sand miles. The two currents are a thousand miles 
apart. The ''Anchises" came out in the current flow- 
ing eastward, and did not stop at Durban, but, on its 
homeward voyage, it is in the current flowing westward. 
The engineers say this current probably caused the 
Indian ocean to be distinguished from the Pacific. . . . 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 193 

At dinner tonight, the decline of American shipping 
came up. "When I went to sea as a boy," Captain 
Warrall said, "the American clipper ships were the 
pride and envy of all seamen. They could sail all 
around the English, and the Maine Yankees could do 
it today, as they have repeatedly proven in the in- 
ternational j^acht races. I often think it is incorrect 
to speak of the decline of American shipping. Some of 
the finest ships afloat should carry the stars and stripes, 
since they are owned and controlled by American 
capitalists. Were it not for the American policy of 
protection, the seas would glisten with the stars and 
stripes. As a famous American says, 'There's a Rea- 
son' for American cargoes being carried in foreign ships. 
The reason is that English seamen receive about half 
as much pay as your seamen receive. The fact that 
you Yankees do not own ships is really another of your 
cute tricks ; you get your carrying done cheaper in 
another way." ... A citizen of Melbourne was at 
the table, and he said he saw the fleet of American war- 
ships come into that harbor a few years ago. He 
spoke very highly of the crews ; he was on the streets 
of Melbourne constantly, and saw thousands of Amer- 
ican sailors, but did not see one who was drunk or rude. 
It is the commonest sort of thing here to hear both 
English and Colonists speak in the highest possible 
terms of America and the American people. ... I 
frequently hear this, too: "You Americans give tips 
too liberally." So far as I am concerned, I only con- 
form to a custom established by the English. I give 
because it is the custom, and give no more than seems 
to be necessary to prevent a riot. The English also 



194 TKAVEL LETTEKS FROM 

have an exaggerated notion of tipping in America. 
One of them told me today that he understood that 
when a bell-boy took a guest to a room in an American 
hotel, he was impudent unless he received a dollar. 
Nothing in the story, of course ; and many of the other 
stories told of Americans over here are equally untrue 
and absurd. . . . On the "Maunganui," in which 
I sailed from New Zealand to Australia, there was no 
concert. But an active, meddlesome man could have 
arranged one, and organized a Sports Committee to 
unnecessarily bother at least three-fourths of the pas- 
sengers. Behave yourself, and let others alone, is a 
good rule. . . . At 3 o'clock this afternoon a 
woman slipped into the music-room, and began sing- 
ing, playing her own accompaniments. There is noth- 
ing quite so absurd as an amateur singer who cannot 
sing much, and who is quavery and uncertain. This 
woman was very bad, and I understand she is to ap- 
pear at the Grand Concert arranged by the Sports 
Committee. 



Monday, February 24. — There is a sick woman on 
board, and the other women pay her a great deal of 
attention. Two of them attend her constantly, in 
her room and on deck, and a dozen others would gladly 
do as much, if opportunity presented. Another woman 
passenger looks after the sick woman's two children. 
. . . There is also a sick man on board. He is very 
ill, and I doubt if he will live to reach Liverpool. Occa- 
sionally, on fine days, a steward brings him on deck, 
where he looks pale and unhappy, and pants for breath, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 195 

but as a rule he is confined to his stuffy room, where 
no one sees him except the doctor. I have never seen 
a sick man more completely neglected, whereas the 
woman passenger who is ill receives every possible 
attention. The women say the sick man prefers to be 
let alone, but I don't believe it. The sick man is a 
tragedy in loneliness. He came out on the "Anchises" 
from London, hoping the voyage would benefit him, 
but it has harmed him instead. . . . The sky is 
very brilliant at night, and we see many shooting stars ; 
and every time we see a shooting star we wish that Mr. 
Riley will fall overboard. Mr. Riley is indulging in a 
great big drunk, and I hear he has borrowed money 
from half the men on board, promising to pay on ar- 
rival at Durban. Mr. Riley is a very active member 
of the Sports Committee, and prominent in everything 
except the Holy Communion services held every Sun- 
day morning. I do not believe he has heard of these, 
as he gambles in the smoking-room until a late hour 
every night, and does not get up very early. If Mr. 
Riley should hear of the early communion service in 
the music-room, he would certainly advise the tall 
pastor as to its ceremonies, for he offers advice in every- 
thing else. My room is near the bar, and I never go 
to it that I do not hear Mr. Riley calling on the bar- 
keeper to hurry along the grog. Mr. Riley also has 
a very irritating laugh, and I have come to dislike him 
as much as a menagerie monkey dislikes a boy. Last 
night there was a dance held near my room, and this, 
in addition to Mr. Riley and the bar, kept me awake 
until long after midnight. . . . "Of course you 
know why the men wear colored socks," a man said 



196 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

to me on deck last night. "It is because colored socks 
do not show dirt, and can be worn until they are filthy. 
I wear white socks, and probably change them oftener 
than any other passenger on the ship, but I think I am 
a marked man because of my white socks. I often 
catch the other passengers looking at my feet in won- 
der." I asked him if he also wore a night-gown, in- 
stead of pajamas, and he said he did, whereupon we 
organized a club, as I also wear white socks and a 
night-gown. Pajamas do not seem enough of a change 
from pants and shirts, and I cannot sleep in them ; and 
colored socks irritate my ankles. . . . On the ship, 
children are almost universally called kids, or kiddies, 
another form of bad English which Americans deplore. 
There are eighteen children on board, and the ship re- 
sembles a nursery. Even the stewards privately com- 
plain of the incessant racket. This morning most of 
the passengers shifted to the port side of the deck, but 
we remained on the starboard side, because all of the 
children went with the crowd, "You must be enjoy- 
ing a quiet and pleasant day," the deck steward said 
to us. A good many of the passengers had their chairs 
shifted back to the starboard side, and I heard them 
grumbling about the noise; from which I am led to 
believe that if the passengers spoke their minds freely, 
a protest would go up to the captain about Mr. Riley, 
the Sports Committee, and the "kiddies." ... A 
passenger was telling today of a man he once knew in 
Melbourne who took thirty drinks of whisky a day. 
Finally, during an illness, the doctor advised him that 
he must be more temperate ; that twenty drinks a day 
were enough. The man tried twenty drinks a day, but 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 197 

the almost total abstinence from alcohol killed him. 
. . . A prominent citizen of Sydney, with whom I 
talk a great deal, says many of his fellow-citizens be- 
lieve that if the government had kept out of railroad 
building, and left it to private enterprise, the country 
would have many more miles of railroad, and double 
its present population. Considering the resources of 
the country, the railroad facilities of Australia are in- 
significant. There are half a dozen different railroads 
running finer trains in little Kansas than may be seen 
in Australia. And both freight and passenger rates 
are lower in Kansas than in Australia; service is 
better, and the employees receive higher wages. There 
is something wrong with the Australian railways, and 
I believe it is government ownership. 



Tuesday, February 25. — Today we had a cricket 
match between members of the crew and the passen- 
gers. Score, 29 to 27, in favor of the crew. The fea- 
tures of the game were : 1. The batting of Mr. Connell, 
who sits at our table ; 2. The bowling (which means 
pitching) of Mr. Connell ; 3. The bad playing of INlr. 
Riley, whom we hate; 4. The appearance of a Mr. 
May, a passenger, as a barracker for the crew. A bar- 
racker in cricket means the same thing as a fan in base- 
ball, and Mr. May's line of talk in making fun of the 
passenger players was very good. I coached him a 
little in baseball talk, and the mean way in which he 
said, "Take him out!" when a pitcher was hit freely, 
was quite a pleasant reminder of home. . . . One 



198 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

of the players in the ship's team was the young man 
who appears when you press a button in the smoking- 
room ; in short, he is one of two bartenders employed 
on the "Anchises." This young man was a particu- 
larly good pitcher. The best batter on the ship's team 
was the second officer. There is a democracy in sport 
which levels all rank. The game lasted nearly two 
hours, and I picked up a smattering of the rules. There 
are eleven players on a side, and each player must take 
his turn at batting ; but the best pitchers of the team 
may do all the pitching. Before a batter is out, the 
pitcher must knock down the wicket with the ball; 
sometimes a batter knocks the ball about a long time 
before he is out. Mr. Connell, who sits at our table, 
made nineteen scores before they got him out, and 
batted three-quarters of an hour. ... A good many 
of the passengers are mining men from South Africa. 
Among these is a man who was born in America, but 
who has lived among Englishmen so long that he cannot 
be distinguished from them. He married an English 
woman, and has three children who have a very rich 
brogue. The man told me today that he very natur- 
ally fell into the ways of the English within a year after 
going to South Africa, and that now our pronunciations 
amuse him as much as they amuse the English. He 
plays cricket, likes it better than baseball, and pitches 
with the peculiar twist which distinguishes the English 
game. . . . This evening I saw a man sitting on 
deck apparently curling his moustache. Later it de- 
veloped that he was getting a string around an aching 
tooth ; this accomplished, he pulled the tooth with a 
single jerk. He said to me : "In a year or two I shall 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 199 

have them all out, and put m a full set of good teeth." 
All the people here seem to look forward to the time 
when they will have all their teeth out, and put in a 
full set of the kind supplied by dentists. One of the 
first things you notice here is the great number of peo- 
ple with full sets of false teeth. I believe I could name 
a dozen comparatively young women on this ship who 
have no teeth of their own. . . . We have been 
in the Southeast trade-winds several days ; the smoke 
from our funnels is always ahead of us. On this track 
the wind blows in the same direction for months at a 
time; there is also a current flowing with the wind. 
A thousand miles south of us, the current flows east- 
ward, and the winds blow eastward as steadily as 
they blow westward here. . . . There is gossip 
on board to the effect that the two women pas- 
sengers who have been nursing the sick woman, 
have quarreled. The invalid is carried on deck 
every fine day, and reclines on a cot, and it has 
been remarked that one of her volunteer nurses has 
disappeared; she is sulking in her room over some 
affront offered her by the other volunteer nurse. The 
passengers are much interested in the row. The nurse 
who is still on duty will leave the ship next Sunday, at 
Durban, and her rival will have a clear field during the 
run of nearly three weeks to Liverpool. The invalid 
was injured in a hunting accident ; her horse fell while 
going over a hedge. She is a particularly nice woman, 
and one of the amusements on deck is to visit with her 
as much as the nurses will allow. And she has a baby 
boy called "Captain," who is loved by everybody. 
. . . On deck this afternoon, a woman ordered her 



200 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

two boys to go to their room, and wash their faces. 
Much to my surprise, they did it. In America, when a 
woman tells her child to do anything, he attempts to 
argue her out of the notion, and usually succeeds. 
The children on the ship are somewhat annoying; 
not because they do not mind well, but because they 
are left to themselves. Their mothers are generally 
members of the Sports Committee, and their nurses 
are flirting with members of the crew. There is one 
very noisy youngster who is rapidly driving me to dis- 
traction. She has a nurse, but I have not seen the nurse 
all day. . . . The mother of a ten-year-old boy 
on board says he does not know anything about money ; 
that he can't tell a shilling from a penny. At home, a 
boy of that age would be packing a newspaper route, 
and know all about money. I particularly admired 
Captain Trask, of the ''Sonoma," because he told me 
two of his sons were carrying newspaper routes. That's 
the way to bring up a boy in town ; buy him a news- 
paper route by the time he is nine or ten years old, and 
\et him learn who is good, and who is not. . . . Mr. 
Riley, who has not yet fallen overboard, although all 
of us have wished it on every shooting star since leav- 
ing Adelaide, believes he is the life of the ship, and a 
general favorite, although I believe I have never known 
anyone to be more generally disliked. He is always 
half -drunk, and thinks that is the proper thing on ship- 
board. There is a disagreeable smell about a steady 
drinker, and Mr. Riley has it in a very marked degree. 
I once heard him say to a modest, gentlemanly man 
with whom he was arguing: "You must confess that 
you admire a good fellow who spends his money more 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 201 

than you admire the saving, industrious man who 
doesn't. . . . Mr. Riley is that sort of a fool ; and 
that sort is the very worst kind. The man Mr. Riley 
was arguing with made a stinging reply, but Mr. Riley 
is usually so drunk that he doesn't know it when repar- 
tee goes against him. . . . Next to our table in 
the dining-room sit a father and mother and their gro^vn 
son. Every morning the wife and mother gives her 
orders to her men-folks for the day, and points out 
what they did the day before that was displeasing. 
They talk in low tones, but we can generally hear what 
they say. The son seems to be the principal culprit, 
as he is paying attention to a certain Miss Helen the 
mother does not like; but the husband is well trained, 
for I have noticed that he takes his orders humbly. 



Wednesday, February 26. — This evening members 
of the crew gave a concert on deck, for the amusement 
of the passengers. The concert did not begin until 9 
o'clock, as most of the performers are waiters in the 
dining-room, and they were compelled to "do up" 
their work before starting. . . . As is common at 
amateur concerts, the stage was the best part of it. 
There were elaborate lighting effects, including foot- 
lights, and much nice furniture, and palms, had been 
loaned for the occasion. As usual, the disturbance 
was not ten feet from my door ; as a matter of fact, I 
loaned my cabin for a dressing-room. Toward the 
sea, the space above the rail was covered with flags, and 
the result was a very elaborate little theatre. Steamer- 



202 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

chairs were arranged in rows for the convenience of the 
passengers, and these chairs are much more comfort- 
able than theatre chairs. As is customary at such 
events here, there was a chairman : John Adams, the 
chief engineer, who announced the numbers, although 
elaborate programmes had been printed, and sold at a 
shilling each. Mr. Adams sat near the stage, with a 
table in front of him, and on the table was a pitcher 
of water and a tumbler. "The first item on the pro- 
gramme," Mr. Adams announced, "will be a song by 
W. Mansbridge, entitled 'Captain Ginjah, O. T.' " 
An American would have said, "The first number on 
the programme," but here they always say "The first 
item on the programme." . . . W. Mansbridge 
turned out to be the steward who has charge of Ade- 
laide's room, and we were quite proud of his per- 
formance, as he was called back twice. The affair 
throughout was considerably better than the average 
amateur concert in a town the size of Atchison. The 
young man who waits on us in the dining-room ap- 
peared as a female impersonator, but was very awk- 
ward ; in fact, about the worst of the lot. He thought 
he must "act natural," and walk about, and all the 
performers had the same notion. Another of the sing- 
ers was the assistant barkeeper who had distinguished 
himself the day before in a cricket match. But he was 
painfully frightened, when singing before an audience, 
and could not show off a voice which was really quite 
good. A dining-room steward named R. Morris was 
positively clever ; if he had a little training, he could 
make a living as an actor-singer, as he has an ex- 
cellent voice, and is young and good-looking. J. S. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 203 

Tait, the purser's clerk, appeared in a series of crayon 
sketches which were very good. Another clever per- 
former was W. A. Dalton, who, I believe, is store- 
keeper. ... At the conclusion of the entertain- 
ment, Mr. Adams, the chairman, proposed a vote of 
thanks to Miss Woodburn, a passenger, who had vol- 
unteered as accompanist. Thereupon the chairman 
of the Sports Committee made a speech, and endorsed 
the motion to adopt a vote of thanks to Miss Wood- 
burn ; indeed, he moved a vote of thanks not only to 
Miss Woodburn, but to the captain, crew, etc. At 
mention of his name. Captain Warrall, who had come 
down quietly from the upper deck, slipped out ; I don't 
think he cares much about mingling with the passen- 
gers. Anyhow, he acts bored when with them, and 
we do not see much of him. But the proposition of the 
chairman of the Sports Committee was adopted, and, 
this being accomplished, we sang "God Save the King," 
and went to bed, or to the smoking-room, or to walk 
the decks. "God Save the King" is sung at the con- 
clusion of every entertainment here, including dances ; 
it is the same air as our "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." 
But the words are different ; the English words begin : 
"God save our gracious king, long live our noble king. 
Send him victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign 
over us. God save the king." While we stole the 
tune from the English, they stole it from the Germans ; 
so it is to the Germans that both Americans and Eng- 
lish should apologize. . . . Mr. Riley, of course, 
attended the concert, and, being drunk, and knowing 
most of the songs on the programme, sang as loudly as 
the performers, very much to the disgust of the passen- 



204 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

gers. A good many have threatened to "speak" to 
Mr. Riley, and tell him plainly that he is a nuisance, 
but so far no one has done so, and he is still of the opin- 
ion that all of us will greatly miss him when he leaves 
the ship at Durban. ... I have had neuralgia 
in the face several days, and the ship doctor said to me : 
"When a man has used tobacco many years, and quits, 
the effect upon his system is very great. Try smoking 
two strong cigars." I had his prescription filled at the 
bar, and enjoyed an exquisite pleasure; cigars never 
tasted so good before. I hoped that I had lost my taste 
for them, but found I hadn't. The men were very 
much amused over the doctor's prescription. Did the 
cigars do the neuralgia any good? The pain stopped 
within five minutes after I began smoking, and has not 
returned since. I smoked only two, and I shall not 
smoke again except on the advice of a physician. 



Thursday, February 27. — I find that Mr. May, the 
fine old gentleman who was attended by so many friends 
when he embarked at Adelaide, is manufacturer of 
May's Complete Harvester, the Australian machine 
which strips off the heads of wheat. This machine 
also threshes the wheat, or separates it from the husks, 
and, within an hour after cutting, the grain is ready to 
be sent to market. At home we cut wheat with a 
binder, which drops it in sheaves. These sheaves are 
then set up in the field to dry, and, in a few days, 
stacked. After the stack has gone through a sweat, a 
thresher is sent for, and the grain made ready for 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 205 

market. Some farmers thresh out of the field, within 
a few weeks after cutting, but old-fashioned farmers 
prefer stacking. The Australian way seems very- 
much better than our way, and Mr. May says that 
with his machine, wheat may be harvested at an ex- 
pense of only 25 cents an acre for labor. The May 
machine sells for from four to six hundred dollars, cuts 
from five to eight feet, and is drawn by from four to 
six horses. The machine has cut as high as thirty acres 
in a day, with everything running favorably, and has 
been in practical use in Australia for twelve years. 
There is waste in any method, but Mr. May says his 
complete harvester saves as large a per cent of the 
wheat as the best machine manufactured in America. 
He told me of a farmer with 400 acres of wheat who 
harvested it with the assistance of a man and a boy. 
It is probable that the May machine would not work 
satisfactorily in our section, although it might prove 
successful in the dry districts further west. Mr. May 
admits that his complete harvester is a success only 
when the wheat is very dry and very ripe. A little 
dampness would necessitate the use of the older-fash- 
ioned binder. . . . Mr. May says wheat-growing 
in Australia has been revolutionized by the discovery 
that the land needed phosphate. This was supplied 
at a cost of about $2 an acre, and the wheat yield 
doubled. Virgin land is now fertilized with phosphate, 
which is drilled in with the wheat. The discovery that 
the land needed additional phosphate was made by a 
young scientist in an agricultural college ; farmers 
everywhere should pay more attention to the doings 
of agricultural colleges, horticultural societies, etc. 



206 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

. .. . Another great machine invented in Australia 
is the jump plow. Much of the land in Australia is 
full of either stumps or stones. The jiimp plow jumps 
the stumps or stones by means of a clever device, the 
main feature of which is a hinge attachment. Most of 
the Australian plows are in gangs of six to twelve, all 
of them supplied with the jump attachment. . . . 
So far as I was able to judge from what Mr. May said, 
our wheat yield is one-third or one-fourth greater per 
acre, without fertilizer, than the wheat yield of Aus- 
tralia; but our land costs a third more. ... In 
Australia, when a young woman is called upon regu- 
larly by a young man, he is known as a "follower." 
In the section of country where I live, he would be 
called the young woman's "steady," or steady com- 
pany. . . . Nine-tenths of the passengers on this 
ship are Australians or New-Zealanders, en route to 
England, and most of them will return home by way 
of the United States, a route considerably shorter than 
by way of Cape Town or the Suez Canal. Most of 
them have interviewed me about routes, and I am now 
getting even with those American railroads against 
which I have grudges. . . . Today we are off the 
southern coast of Madagascar, but a drizzly rain is fall- 
ing, and we cannot see a half-mile from the ship. At 
noon the distance to Durban is about the distance from 
New York to Chicago, which is made by railroad train 
in eighteen hours, but we shall not make it under three 
days and nights, as we steam only 330 miles a day. 
This is our fifteenth day at sea, without sight of land, 
and neither of our double engines has stopped once 
since they were started at Adelaide. ... I believe 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 207 

I admire our tall pastor as much as anyone on board. 
He lets us all alone, and does not ask us if we read the 
Bible, and saj'' our prayers. To let people alone is the 

most agreeable thing you can do for them 

When you send a wireless telegram at sea, you are com- 
pelled to sign the following agreement : "No company 
concerned in the forwarding of this telegram shall be 
liable for any loss, injury, or damage from non-trans- 
mission or non-delivery or neglect, in relation to this 
telegram, or delay, or error, or omission in the trans- 
mission thereof, through whatever cause such non- 
transmission, non-delivery, neglect, delay, error or 
omission shall have occurred. Having read the above 
conditions, I request that this telegram may be for- 
warded according to said conditions, by which I agree 
to be bound." . . . Under that agreement, the 
wireless operator might tear up every telegram, and 
senders would have no redress. A wireless contract 
is as one-sided as the contract you sign when you buy 
a steamship ticket. When I bought two tickets for 
Durban from Adelaide, I was compelled to sign a con- 
tract which relinquished every right I have in law. If 
the captain sees fit, he may change his destination from 
Durban to Capetown or Montevideo, and not go to 
Durban at all. In case he should conclude to go to 
London direct, and not stop at any South-African port, 
I agreed to pay him the price of two tickets between 
Durban and London. If for any reason he finds it 
necessary or convenient to put into any other port, to 
make repairs, I agreed to pay my board while such re- 
pairs were being made. If the captain should take a 
dislike to me, and put me off on the coast of Madagas- 



208 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

car, I agreed not to ask damages for the inconvenience 
when I purchased my tickets. Fortunately, these cut- 
throat contracts are almost never enforced, but they 
could be enforced should necessity arise. 



Friday, February 28. — This has been the most 
miserable day I have ever spent at sea. A steady rain 
began falling at daylight, and continued without in- 
termission until evening. The passengers were driven 
from the upper deck, and congregated on one side of 
the main deck, where the children made more noise 
than ever. The dampness was of the penetrating kind 
that reached our clothing and our rooms, and we could 
not be comfortable anywhere. . . . About five 
o'clock the rain ceased, and a boy went about beating 
a gong. This was notice of a meeting of the general 
Sports Committee in the music-room, to decide whether 
the fancy dress ball arranged for tonight should be 
given up on account of the rain. The vote was in favor 
X)f going ahead with it. The sailors at once began ar- 
ranging the dry side of the deck into a ball-room, and 
the passengers were forced to go to their cabins, or sit 
in the smoking-room. . . . The fancy dress ball 
proved to be more creditable than was anticipated. 
Those who took part wore their costumes to dinner at 
7 o'clock, and the children, nurses and stewards gath- 
ered in the main hallway to see them go in. There were 
about twenty-five costumes in all, nearly all of them 
made on board. One young woman appeared as 
"Topsy," and her feet were bare. Women usually 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA, 209 

dislike to show their feet, and there was a good deal of 
surprise expressed because this woman appeared with 
nothing much on except a dress made of coarse sack- 
ing. She not only appeared barefooted in the dining- 
room, but danced in her bare feet. Afterwards the 
passengers voted on the best costume, and "Topsy" 
won the second prize, the first going to an English 
actor who appeared as Cardinal Wolsey. . . . Mr. 
Riley borrowed a greasy suit of working-clothes from 
a sailor, and, appearing at the dance as a Sundowner, or 
tramp, it became necessary to take him away. . . . 
The gents who appeared in fancy dresses talked about 
the ball until 1 : 30 a. m., as amateur actors talk about 
the performance, and of course this talk centered around 
the bar. As my room adjoins the bar, I heard the talk 
and the accompanying rattle of glasses. So my dis- 
agreeable day began at 5 : 30 a. m., and ended at 1 : 30 
the following morning. I shall long remember Febru- 
ary 28, 1913. 



Saturday, March 1 . — On the lower deck this morn- 
ing there was a Pillow Fight, arranged by the Sports 
Committee. A spar, or smooth pole, was fixed about 
six feet from the deck. Beneath the spar was arranged 
a net made of heavy sail-cloth. Two men climbed 
out on the pole, and fought with pillows, the aim of each 
man being to knock his opponent off. The participants 
were not permitted to hold to the pole mth their hands, 
and they fell off very easily. This was the only really 
amusing thing arranged by the Sports Committee at 
many meetings announced by the disagreeable beating 



210 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

of a gong. The passengers witnessed the pillow fights 
from the deck above, and screamed with laughter. The 
sea was rough, and every player got one or more tumbles 
into the net. . . . Soon after the pillow fight, I 
got even with members of the Sports Committee. 
They were standing on the weather side of the lower 
deck, displaying their usual gravity in superintending 
a foolish game, when a big wave came over the side and 
soaked them ^\l. This was even funnier than the pil- 
low fight, and the passengers enjoyed it quite as much. 
. . . The storm which began with rain yesterday 
morning, increased in violence as the day wore on, and 
it was soon necessary to suspend the sports. By noon, 
the sea was much rougher than it has been at any time 
since we left Adelaide on the 12th of last month. The 
passengers dreaded to go to their rooms, as all port- 
holes were closed ; so the stewards found it necessary 
to distribute the little tin affairs which add to the dis- 
comfort of a sea voyage. . . . Throughout the day I 
did not feel the slightest discomfort because of the 
terrific motion, and for the first time witnessed a storm 
at sea from the deck of a ship. On a quiet day the sea 
is very uninteresting, but on a rough day it is wonder- 
ful ; the waves seem to fight each other and the ship. 
Ten or twelve of the passengers had gone to the upper 
deck to finish some foolish deck game, when a wave 
swept over them. The ship reeled from the blow, and 
we saw the water pouring in torrents from the roof of 
the deck where we sat. Then down the stairway came 
not only a fiood of water, but the soaked passengers 
who had been playing the foolish game. They were 
as wet as though they had been in swimming without 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 211 

removing their clothing. The same wave poured water 
into the skylight over the dining-room, and flooded 
everything. After that, passengers were not permitted 
on the storm side of either deck. . . . Late in the 
afternoon I went to my room to take a nap. In order 
to get about the ship, it was necessary to catch a quiet 
moment, and then take a run. I soon went to sleep 
after reaching my room, but was awakened by a tremen- 
dous rattle and bang in the bar, next door. A big roll 
had sent most of the glassware crashing to the floor, 
and Mr. Riley will be compelled to drink out of bottles. 
It was a great comfort to me to get even with the bar- 
room. . . . The stewards saj^ the approach to the 
coast of South Africa is always rough. The passengers 
are saying that the storm will be very much worse dur- 
ing the night ; that a sailor told them so, but the chief 
engineer told me that a wireless message announces 
that the weather at Durban is calm, and that we shall 
certainly run out of the storm during the night. . . . 
At dinner, not half the passengers were in their places, 
but Adelaide and I occupied our usual seats at table, 
although we had a difficult time getting down the 
two stairways to the dining-room. The dishes were 
fenced up, so that they could not roll off the tables, 
and the port-holes were under water at every roll of 
the ship. The sick man who has been seen on deck 
nearly every day of the voyage, surprised us all by ap- 
pearing at dinner for the first time, although he was 
almost literally carried down the stairways, and across 
the dining-room floor. The diners at the two centre 
tables were forced to go to other tables, owing to a 
crash in the skylight above, and a downpour of water. 



212 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

But in spite of all this confusion, Mr. Connell, a very 
calm and well-informed man who sits at my table, in- 
terested me by telling of something he had read during 
the day. At the battle of Waterloo, in 1812, less than 
170,000 men were engaged. The battle lasted twelve 
hours, yet the casualties amounted to 61,000. The 
battle of Lule-Burgas, fought between the Bulgarians 
and Turks in 1912, lasted five days, and, although 
300,000 men took part with modern implements of 
war, the casualties amounted to only 35,000. We mod- 
erns have more effective weapons than the ancients, but 
seem afraid to use them. The modern man has more 
sense than bravery. The old savage man had a fool 
notion that it was bravery to fight for a ruler, but 
modern man has discovered that bravery is to fight 
for himself, and meet his ordinary difficulties with pa- 
tience and fairness. The prizefighter is brave in that 
he is able to stand a great deal of punishment, but in 
private life he is not very nice, and often keeps a saloon 
and whips his wife. ... At dinner, Mr. Connell 
also told me that in Australia, where the women have 
full suffrage, the wives of the workingmen often vote 
against their husbands. In a certain election of 1911, 
the Labor party demanded the adoption of a measure 
that would result in many strikes and much disturb- 
ance. It was believed that the measure would carry 
by a large majority, but the wives of the labor men 
generally voted for peace, and the measure demanded 
by their husbands was defeated by two to one. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 213 

Sunday, March 2. — I passed out of sight of land at 
Adelaide, South Australia, at 7 : 20 on the evening of 
February 12, and picked it up again at 7 o'clock this 
morning, when I awoke and looked out of the window 
to see how the weather was. The land was South 
Africa. The voyage we have just completed takes the 
passenger out of sight of land longer than any other 
now being made in steamships. There are longer voy- 
ages, but on none of them is the passenger out of sight 
of land for eighteen days. And during the eighteen 
days we did not see a ship ; no signs of life whatever, 
except a few birds and a few fiying-fish. It was a mo- 
notonous, dreary experience I do not care to repeat. 
. . . South Africa, as seen in the vicinity of Dur- 
ban, is mountainous, and the mountains are covered 
with verdure. . . . By 8 : 30, Durban could be 
plainly seen, and it did not look unlike a portion of 
Sydney, with its residences scattered over the hills, 
and almost every house covered with red tile roofing 
imported from France. . . . The officers said we 
should tie up at the dock by ten o'clock, and that is 
exactly what we did, although we did not reach the 
hotel until nearly noon. The delay was caused, it was 
said, by the slowness of the doctor and the customs 
officer, but I did not see the doctor at all, and the cus- 
toms officer, when I finally got to him, did not open 
one of my packages. However, he charged me $3.75 
duty on a portable typewriter which I cannot learn to 
use, having so long been accustomed to a different key- 
board. Once out of the customs house, we called two 
negro ricksha men, and were soon on our way to the 
Marine Hotel ; we avoided the Royal because we had 



214 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

heard Mr. Riley say he intended to stop there. Most 
of the passengers will spend the night ashore, as a re- 
lief from the long experience with ship beds and ship 
fare. The negro ricksha men who pulled us to the 
hotel wore cow-horns on their heads, and pieces of 
leopard skin on their backs. The rickshas were marked : 
"For Europeans only," and the negroes carried us to 
the hotel on a keen trot, for a shilling each. Our men 
carried cow-bells, which they rang frequently as warn- 
ing for pedestrians to get out of the way. ... I 
have, not lately been surprised as agreeably as I am in 
Durban. Instead of being a rough, crude place, it is 
one of the finest cities I have ever seen. The hotel at 
which we are staying is as fine in every way as the Aus- 
tralia in Sydney, a city of over half a million, and the 
price is the same : $3.60 per day, including everything. 
The town hall in Durban is almost as fine as the capital 
in some of the Australian states ; and this town of sixty 
thousand people, half of them black, has parks, busi- 
ness blocks, zoological gardens, and private residences 
that would do credit to any city of any size anywhere. 
We hired a new Overland automobile, driven by an 
intelligent Englishman, and although gasoline costs 
forty cents a gallon here, the charge was only $3 an 
hour. He took us to one of the finest bathing-beaches 
I have seen anywhere, and many of the hotels around 
it would be creditable in Atlantic City. Durban is 
tropical, and the luxuriant growths of flowers and plants 
reminded us of Honolulu. Another thing I did not 
know about Durban is that it has thousands of Hindus ; 
citizens of India. All the servants at the hotel where 
we are staying are Hindus, and wear the picturesque 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 215 

costumes seen in India ; during our ride today we saw 
literally thousands of these people, and almost as many 
women and children as men. In certain sections of 
Durban you see only Hindus, and temples are almost 
as numerous as churches in other sections of the town. 
All sorts of strange shops are kept by men with strange 
names ; and all the Indians we saw look much more 
prosperous than their relatives in India. The Hindus 
were brought here by the English a good many years 
ago, under indenture and promise to return them to 
India at the end of a certain number of years, but they 
liked the country, and most of them did not care to 
return. There are upwards of a hundred thousand of 
them in Natal, but their importation is now prohibited. 
The Hindus are like the Chinese in that they are will- 
ing to work and behave, and their entrance to most 
countries is therefore prohibited. . . . We passed 
a sugar mill during our automobile ride today, and were 
told that all the workmen in the mill, and in the great 
fields of cane surrounding it, were Hindus, or coolies. 
Just now the cane is being cut and hauled to the mills. 
. . . At lunch today, we saw the waiters serving 
roasting-ears. On the bill of fare they are called Mealie 
Cobs. We ordered some, and the waiter offered to 
cut the corn from the cob. I ate mine in true Amer- 
ican fashion, but Adelaide had hers cut off the cob. 
The variety was Early Adams, and it wasn't very sweet. 
The best thing they have at this fine hotel is pineapple. 
They also have alligator pears. The best alligator 
pears grow in the Samoa Islands, and we had them on 
the "Sonoma," but did not care for them. They are 
eaten with pepper and salt and vinegar and oil; an 



216 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

alligator pear is more vegetable than fruit. Today we 
also had mangoes, which resemble the American paw- 
paw, but they are much better fruit. You peel them, 
and eat them as you do green corn, the seed represent- 
ing the cob. . . . This being Sunday, we saw two 
Salvation Army meetings on the street. All the "sol- 
diers" were negroes, and there was the usual drum in 
the centre of the circle, and the usual pleas for money. 
. . . Now that I am out of Australia, and off the 
"Anchises," which carried Australian water, I am free 
to drink all the water I want. I saw so many false 
teeth in Australia, and heard so frequently that the 
bad teeth of the Australians were due to the water, 
that I never took a drink that my teeth didn't ache. 
. . . We learned this evening that all the money 
Mr. Riley spent in gambling and drinking was loaned 
him by a Mr. Wilson, who came ashore this afternoon, 
and is trying hard to get his money. At a late hour, 
Mr. Riley had not been able to satisfy his creditor. 
You meet strange characters on ships. Think of a man 
going to sea without money, and being financed by a 
stranger. . . . We knew a woman on the ship who 
was so unhappy because of a big waist that she imagined 
her husband was mean to her, and she told a good many 
of the women that were it not for her children, she 
would seek forgetfulness by enclosing her head in a 
pillow-slip, and inhaling chloroform. , . . Dur- 
ban had a small harbor which did very well in the days 
of small ships, but when big ships became fashionable 
the town was compelled to spend millions in improve- 
ments. The result is that ships drawing thirty feet 
can tie up at its docks. Good coal is found not far 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 217 

from Durban, and its coal trade is very important. 
Much of the coal used on the railways in India comes 
from Durban, and every ship coming this way coals 
here. . . . Before going to bed tonight, we went 
down in front of the hotel, called a ricksha, and went 
for a ride to the beach to cool off. The negro who 
pulled us was a huge fellow wearing a pair of cow-horns 
as a sort of head-dress ; seven-tenths of the hundreds 
of ricksha men wear the same amusing head-dress. 
Our man trotted all the way to the beach and back, 
up hill and down. It is a considerable task for a man 
to pull a buggy and two passengers for nearly an hour, 
and always keep up a trot. On our return to the 
hotel at 10 p. m., the man did not seem very tired. 
The road to the beach was lined with hundreds of other 
people riding in rickshas, and there were many rick- 
sha stands on the way. At the beach we saw thousands 
of people sitting around in chairs, or dining, or listening 
to music. Some of the restaurants had moving-pic- 
ture shows to attract customers. And it seems to me 
I never saw such big rollers as came in from the Indian 
ocean at Durban beach. Four years ago this beach 
was a dreary piece of sand. Durban has lately been 
spending money like a drunken sailor, and has made 
it pay. 



Monday, March 3. — Owing to a tremendous rain 
and wind storm, we have been confined all day to our 
rooms at the hotel. Yesterday was bright and fine, 
and we were rather disposed to laugh at the statement 
that this is the rainy season in South Africa ; but the 



218 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

storm today has given us more confidence in the guide- 
books. The wind was so strong that the "Anchises," 
lying at its dock, twice broke its hawsers, and was only 
saved from drifting by the prompt use of the anchors. 
The passengers who were ashore found it very difficult 
to get back to the ship, and from our windows at the 
hotel we could see that the wind was doing considerable 
damage. . . . And this in spite of the finest, 
largest and brightest rainbow I have ever seen, this 
morning. . . . White women are scarce in South 
Africa. In the big dining-room of the Marine Hotel, 
at dinner tonight, all the guests were men, except four. 
Englishmen come to this country as Americans go to 
the Klondike. . . . The Marine Hotel introduces 
one feature that is entirely new to me ; dinner is com- 
menced with a hors-d'oeuvre — a sort of salad of pickled 
fish, as an appetizer. Then follows the regular dinner, 
starting with soup. When a king dines, he begins with 
a hors-d'oeuvre, the head waiter says. . . . One of 
the ricksha men who stands in front of the hotel has 
carried us three times, and regards us as his property. 
When we appear, he runs up to us, and bows almost to 
the ground; if other ricksha men appear, he pushes 
them angrily away. The negroes here are exactly like 
our negroes, except that they talk Kaffir ; we have not 
seen any who are able to speak English easily. The 
negro women wear their hair in a peculiar way, and 
many of them dress as the men do. The ricksha men 
who stand in front of the hotel are always laughing and 
talking in a noisy, good-natured way. There are sev- 
eral tribes of negroes here, and all of them have differ- 
ent characteristics in dress. . . . Before Durban's 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 219 

present harbor was completed, passengers disembarked 
from ships in baskets. The big ships, not being able 
to come into the harbor, were met outside by tenders. 
Passengers leaving the ship were locked in a huge 
basket, and this basket was hoisted over the side with 
a steam winch, and lowered to the deck of the tender 
rolling alongside. This method of embarking and dis- 
embarking is still used at many points along the coast, 
and we shall test it on our way to Zanzibar. . . . 
The amateur humorist is a great task not only in private 
life, but in books as well. Today I bought a book to 
obtain information of the East Coast route to England, 
but found it so full of jokes that I could get no informa- 
tion out of it. Every man, when he writes or talks, 
thinks he must use a great many jokes ; everyone seems 
to make too much of the fun, fun, fun, and laugh, 
laugh, laugh idea. I often wish people were more seri- 
ous. . . . My next ship journey will be up the 
East Coast of Africa to Aden, and thence through the 
Red Sea to the Mediterranean and Naples. I have 
spent considerable of my time in Durban in arranging 
for a cabin to myself on the German ship. Occupying 
a room with three others is the red flag that brings out 
the bull in my nature. I not only object to other men 
in a room with me, but I don't like them very well in 
the hall outside. I am particular about having things 
of my own, and in the list, a sleeping-room is near the 
top. ... In this fine hotel, it is impossible to get 
a good cup of coffee, and I drink tea instead, although 
I abominate tea. I have not had a decent cup of coffee 
in nearly three months. As I am accustomed at home 
to the best coffee in the world, the deprivation is a se- 



220 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

vere one. I have no doubt that all the hotels where I 
have lately been a guest use the best coffee obtainable, 
but their way of making it is not my way. You get 
the best coffee at home because it is made your way. 
. . . As in coffee, so it is in politics, religion, the 
choice of a wife, and a hundred other things : what 
suits others does not suit you. You want coffee made 
your way; and you are entitled to it. . . . I do 
not say my way of making coffee is the best, but I do 
say it suits me better than any other way I have ever 
tried. I venture to say that nine out of ten guests at 
every hotel abuse the coffee. . . . Every morning 
* at 6 : 30 there is a rap on my door. I look out, and find 
a Hindu servant with tea. I tell him I do not want 
tea, but would appreciate hot water for shaving. This 
the Hindu cannot understand, so I now take the tea, 
and shave with it. ... I was on the "Anchises" 
so long that I almost used up a cake of shaving-soap. 
I wonder I didn't get the scurvy ; they say that is the 
scourge of a long sea voyage. 



Tuesday, March 4. — This day opened with genuine 
inauguration weather; the storm of yesterday con- 
tinued all night, and seemed as fierce as ever at 8 a. m. 
. The Natal Mercury of this morning devoted 
a full page to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, as 
president. It also printed an editorial of a column and 
a quarter entitled, "The Future of America," which 
was funny because of absurd statements. "Rural 
America," the editorial says, "knows little of decent 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 221 

roads, well-organized police, or mail facilities, and con- 
sists largely of wide-spreading areas that do not con- 
tain one human being to the square mile." ... If 
newspapers print such statements about America, is it 
any wonder that the English people have absurd no- 
tions of the Americans? The editorial views with 
alarm the race problem in America ; it also fears that 
the American people are today where the Romans were 
just before the decline began. . . . The Natal Mer- 
cury contains sixteen eight-column pages, and is a more 
creditable newspaper than will be found in the average 
American town of 32,000 population. Durban has 
66,000, but 34,000 are negroes who do not read or 
speak English. Nine pages of the Mercury's issue of 
this morning are devoted to advertising ; the people 
of all the British colonies seem to be well trained in 
newspaper advertising. Although the Mercury prints 
eight columns about the inauguration of America's 
new president (most of it absurd, but probably not 
more absurd than would be my comments on a similar 
event in Africa), it says nothing about the "Anchises" 
breaking from its moorings during yesterday's storm, 
or of its detention in the harbor. The local news is 
badly handled in all the papers I see over here; the 
people do not seem to care for local news, so long as 
they get telegrams from England. . . . Durban 
people are just now excited because His Majesty's Ship 
"New Zealand" will arrive in a day or two. This is 
the battleship of dreadnought type which was built 
with New Zealand money, and presented to the Eng- 
lish government. Canada will give three battleships 
to the English, and Australia three. All the other 



222 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

English colonies have been called upon to show their 
love for the mother country in a similar way ; and this 
really amounts to an order. India, Ceylon, Africa, and 
all the other countries controlled by Great Britain, 
must assist the English in keeping ahead of Germany 
in the race for naval supremacy. It seems an absurd 
situation to me, but possibly I know as little about it 
as the editorial writer on the Natal Mercury knows 
about America. (Note. — Since the above was writ- 
ten, Canada has balked, and refused to vote money 
for English battleships.) . . . Some writers say 
that Africa is the Coming Country ; that thousands 
of years hence, when Europe and America have become 
as dry as India or the Sahara desert, Africa will be 
about right, and contain cities like New York and Lon- 
don. By that time. New York and London will have 
been deserted, as old Memphis, Thebes and Babylon 
are now deserted. This is said to be the history of the 
world : Countries wear out like men ; the country 
around the Red Sea was once fertile and populous, 
but is now a desert, owing to slowly changing climatic 
conditions ; the world is so old that mountain ranges 
have been worn level with the surrounding plains by 
the wind, rain, heat and cold of many centuries. This 
is what will finally happen to our Rocky Mountains. 
The country where we live was once tropical, and it 
will become tropical again, in the course of time. The 
one thing we do not realize is the great age of the world, 
having long been taught that it is ten or twelve thou- 
sand years old. It is more than ten or twelve million 
years old ; some geologists say its age is certainly 
forty or fifty million years. . . . My father left 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 223 

Indiana because he believed fever and ague would 
always be a pest. Indiana is now one of our finest 
states. Africa is getting rid of the sleeping sickness, 
of the mysterious fly which causes death, of fever and 
ague, and of other menaces to health ; it is said that 
South Africa has shown a greater development in the 
past twenty years than any other country has ever 
shown in a similar length of time. Johannesburg is as 
fine a town as Kansas City, and almost as large. Dur- 
ban is a wonder, and Capetown claims to be a health 
resort. This in South Africa only, whereas the real 
growth in the future, many believe, will come from 
East Africa. . . . The mythical "Cape to Cairo" 
railway extends from the Cape of Good Hope, in South 
Africa, to Cairo, in North Africa, or Egypt. Cape- 
town has built a railroad far into the interior, north- 
ward, and Cairo has built far into the interior, south- 
ward ; some day it will be possible for travelers to go 
from Capetown to Cairo by rail. I am going from 
Capetown to Cairo, but, the "Cape to Cairo" line 
still being a dream, I shall go to Victoria Falls by rail, 
and thence to Beira, where I will take a German ship 
for a long journey to Port Said, the Mediterranean en- 
trance to the Suez Canal, and only a few miles from 
Cairo. ... I have been compelled to quit eating 
roasting-ears American fashion at the Marine Hotel 
in Durban. The Hindu waiters stood around and 
watched me in surprise, and other guests were also 
greatly interested. Finally a strange man appeared 
at the entrance, and seemed to be studying the lights 
with a view of getting a moving picture of the perform- 
ance; so I now have my corn cut off the cob, which 



224 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is the universal practice here. . . . The "An- 
chises" will not get away for Capetown and London 
until noon on Thursday. The chief engineer and doc- 
tor dined at our hotel tonight, with two of the lady 
passengers, and they told us that when the ship left 
Adelaide, it was followed by a pigeon, which was no 
doubt attracted by the grains of wheat on deck. The 
first night out, the pigeon probably rested in the rig- 
ging ; anyway it was flying about the ship the second 
morning. Then it was too late to go back, and the 
bird has been adopted by the crew. It flies about the 
ship while at sea, but soon returns to the deck or rig- 
ging. It has become quite tame, and will take food 
from anyone, and grumble for more, as pet pigeons do. 
The sailors thought the bird would leave them at Dur- 
ban, but it didn't make up with the other pigeons that 
called to see it, and will probably accompany the " An- 
chises" to Liverpool. . . . Mr. Riley slept on 
board last night, as he is in love with a married woman 
who detests him. His ticket read to Durban only, 
but he will probably attempt to go on to Capetown, 
m order that he may further enjoy drunkenness, love, 
and the Sports Committee. 



Wednesday, March 5. — Rain has fallen three days 
in succession. Until Monday last, there had been a 
drouth so long and severe that the mealie crop is said 
to be ruined. Mealie is the name given corn here; 
wheat is called corn. The farmers in South Africa grow 
two crops of corn per year, and export a great deal to 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 225 

London. I saw the statement in print recently that 
the Argentine Republic, in South America, exports 
more corn than the United States. We raise much 
more corn than Argentine, but use most of it, whereas 
Argentine uses very little. . . . This afternoon, 
in spite of the rain, we visited a steam whaling-ship 
lying in the harbor. Twenty similar vessels make 
headquarters in Durban, and the whales caught are 
converted into oil in six factories located on the sea- 
shore, at a point so distant that the smell is not ob- 
jectionable to the town-people. All whales caught are 
brought into Durban harbor ; then loaded on flat cars, 
and sent down to the factories. ... In 1911, the 
luckiest boat in the Durban whaling-fleet caught two 
hundred whales ; in 1912, the lucky boat caught only 
one hundred. The boat with the least luck caught 
only sixty in 1912, as whales are becoming scarcer. 
Last month, the boat I visited caught only one whale ; 
the month before eight — three of the eight were caught 
in one day. In certain whaling-grounds off the coast 
of South America, fourteen whales have been caught 
in one day by one ship. A fifty-six foot sperm whale 
is said to be worth $1,750. The stock of the local 
whaling-companies is quoted every day by the Durban 
papers, and the best of them pay big dividends. . . . 
The whaler I visited is a seventy-ton affair, a small ship 
compared with the 10,000 tons of the "Anchises." 
The captain of the whaler showed us about, and he 
looked like a carpenter or other mechanic who calls at 
your house to do a job of work. But he is compelled 
to understand navigation as well as the captain of a 
liner, and pass the same examination. He brought the 



226 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

ship from England, a voyage of fifty-nine days. Its 
engines can make only about ten miles an hour, and 
its boilers require only eight tons of coal per twenty- 
four hours. There is a crew of ten men, including mate, 
engineer, gunner, and cook. In these ships, whales 
are not chased in small boats ; when a whale is sighted, 
it is pursued by the ship, under full steam. At a dis- 
tance of fifty or a hundred yards, a harpoon is fired 
into the whale from a good-sized cannon. There is a 
time fuse attached to the harpoon, and this explodes 
a bomb which should kill the whale. A chain is then 
attached to its tail, and the carcass is towed to the 
rendering works in Durban. When a harpoon is fas- 
tened in a whale, and the bomb does not explode prop- 
erly, it sometimes makes a run, and pulls the ship as 
easily as it might pull a row-boat. In such a case, an- 
other harpoon is fired into it as soon as opportunity 
offers. Frequently the whale breaks the great rope 
which attaches the harpoon to the ship. The reader 
will probably understand that a two-inch rope is at- 
tached to the harpoon fired from the cannon, and if the 
harpoon hits fairly, the whale is hooked and handled 
as a fisherman handles a small fish with a light line. 
If the whale runs away, the rope is let out slowly, being 
kept just taut enough to prevent breaking. If the 
whale rushes toward the ship the rope is hauled in 
rapidly, with a steam winch, as a fisherman reels in 
his line. If the bomb explodes inside the whale, as 
intended, it is usually killed at once, but this does not 
always happen, and then a fight is necessary. At 
Durban, the whaling-ships usually go out at 4 o'clock 
every morning, and. return after nightfall. The cap- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 227 

tain is also the pilot, and he took me up on the bridge. 
I have never before been on the bridge of a ship ; on 
a liner, it is a violation of law for a passenger to go on 
the bridge. The captain also took me down to his 
cabin, which is reached by a ladder. The mate, en- 
gineer and gunner occupy the cabin with him, and it is 
the darkest and worst ventilated place I have ever 
visited. Two of the beds are simply holes-in-the-wall, 
and the rooms of the gunner and mate are the funniest 
holes ever occupied by men. The ladder leading to 
the officers' quarters was so steep and slippery that 
Adelaide was afraid to attempt to go down. The cap- 
tain invited me to go out with him next Friday, and I 
accepted ; but when the time comes, I suppose I will 
back out. He says he often has visitors, and that a 
good many of them have seen whales caught. In the 
best season for whaling, a whale is caught every day, 
and always within fifteen or twenty miles of Durban. 
If the weather is stormy, the whaling-ships do not go 
out, as nothing can be done in rough weather. The 
captain, who is a Norwegian, also invited us to stay for 
dinner, but we declined, although we saw the dinner on 
the table. It consisted of boiled beef and potatoes, 
bread and butter, dried-apple sauce, and tea. . . . 
On the way to visit the whaling-ship we passed the 
Durban court-house. It was surrounded by negroes. 
The inferior races everywhere have a passion for going 
to law. To go to law a good deal — to have confidence 
in the justice dealt out by lawyers and judges — is 
everywhere a sign of feeble intelligence. . . . There 
are only 90,000 whites in all of Natal, and 300,000 na- 
tives. The Hindus number about 180,000, and lately 



228 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

the whites are refusing them license to do business. 
If they are willing to work as laborers, for low wages, 
well and good, but if they attempt to engage in busi- 
ness for themselves, they are to be told that business 
is for Europeans only. . . . The present storm is 
the worst in two years. This afternoon I went past 
the harbor, and saw great waves dashing over the sea- 
wall and lighthouse. I also saw four ships lying out- 
side, waiting to get in, and a number inside waiting to 
get out. No ship has passed in or out of Durban har- 
bor since the arrival of the Atchison hoodoo, and forty 
bath-houses at the beach were demolished by the waves 
Tuesday morning. . . A man who has lived here 
fifty-four years tells me that while this section is very 
good for agriculture, lung fever carries off so many 
cattle and horses as to seriously threaten the stock- 
raising industry. . . . When a native African 
woman marries, she mixes clay with her wool, and 
makes a circular dome out of it which looks like a 
stove-pipe hat tilted on the back of the head. This 
head-dress forces the woman to sleep on a wooden pil- 
low, as the Japanese women do, since the hair when 
once put up is not taken down for months. . . . 
The Natal Mercury, a Durban paper I buy every morn- 
ing, contained the following amusing telegram in its 
issue for today: ''London, March 4. — Renter's corre- 
spondent in Washington telegraphs that Dr. W. Wil- 
son has arrived there, preparatory to his induction into 
the presidency. Suffragists have been debarred from 
participating in the presidential procession. Numbers 
of the demonstrators paraded yesterday, and women 
mounted on horseback helped the police to clear the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 229 

route." This was all the paper contained about the 
inauguration, although issued the day after the in- 
auguration took place, and the editor's motto is : "The 
Natal Mercury prints all the news all the time." All 
American news in the Australian, New Zealand and 
South-African papers is equally brief and absurd. 
Little wonder that the English and Americans do not 
understand each other. . . . From the window of 
my room at the hotel, I can look into the office of a big 
wholesale house across the street. Every afternoon, 
the bookkeepers and stenographers may be seen drink- 
ing tea. A cup of tea at four o'clock in the afternoon 
is a universal custom here. Sometimes bread and but- 
ter or cakes are served with it. . . . Nearly oppo- 
site our hotel is an apartment house where a great 
many negro servants are employed, and a crowd of 
them may usually be seen in front of the servant's en- 
trance. They are so far away that while we can hear 
them talk, we cannot hear what they say, and they act 
so much like our negroes that they seem to be talking 
English, although they are not. Negroes have been 
taken to almost every portion of the earth, and speak 
nearly all languages. In some of the islands of the 
West Indies they speak only French, having never 
heard anything else. In English colonies they speak 
English, but do not use the broad R, as do the negroes 
in our Southern states. Probably millions of them 
speak Arabic. Many of them are Mohammedans, and 
many of them speak Hebrew. But wherever you see 
them, they have the same good-natured, care-free way. 
In Africa, there are dozens of different tribal languages 
in use among the blacks, but in foreign countries the 



230 Travel letters prom 

young negroes soon forget their mother-tongue. Prob- 
ably among all the millions of negroes in the United 
States, not one has the remotest knowledge of the orig- 
inal language of his ancestors. The Hindus, Chinese, 
Japanese and Hebrews always retain their own lan- 
guage and religion, in whatever part of the world they 
may live, but the negroes soon adopt the language of 
the people with whom their lot is cast, and become 
Methodists, Mohammedans, Catholics or Hebrews in 
religion with equal facility. 



Thursday, March 6. — Yesterday it was said the 
storm was the worst in two years ; today it is said to be 
the worst in ten years. In spite of the pouring rain, 
we hired covered rickshas this morning and went out 
to the beach, where we found the angry waves destroy- 
ing the beautiful place. The storm had attracted an 
enormous crowd, the people coming by street railway, 
and all of them were soaked, while we were dry and 
warm in our covered rickshas, with oilcloth aprons in 
front. The restaurants, curio shops, moving-picture 
shows, etc., were under water, and some of them were 
being torn to pieces. Every little while a string of 
bath-houses went into the sea. The great board walk 
along the beach was smashed into kindling-wood, and 
holes were dug in the asphalt street in front of it. Great 
boulders from the breakwater were rolled up on the 
beach, and deposited on the floors of the restaurants. 
Coolies were running about in droves, trying to lash 
down some of the smaller buildings, under the direction 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 231 

of white men, but the coolies were afraid, and the mad 
excitement everywhere reminded me of the lack of 
order at a fire. Not far offshore, the big White Star 
ship "Medic" was anchored, unable to get into the 
harbor. This ship left Australia a few days after we 
did, and we know some of the passengers. We could 
plainly see the ship pitch and roll, and swing 'round its 
anchor. Further down were a number of other ships 
unable to land their passengers, and to the right, in- 
side the harbor, we could see the blue funnels of the 
"Anchises." And all this loss, disturbance and incon- 
venience to thousands simply to keep the Atchison 
hoodoo indoors four days in succession. . . . We 
watched the angry sea for an hour, the water occasion- 
ally washing under our rickshas, and were so dry and 
comfortable in spite of the rain that we determined to 
visit the Hindu market, down-town. The Hindu popu- 
lation of Durban is greater than the total population 
of Atchison, and certain sections of the city are de- 
voted to them. There are certainly twice as many 
Hindu stores in Durban as there are stores of all kinds 
in Atchison. We saw large wholesale establishments 
owned and operated by Hindus, and devoted entirely 
to Hindu trade. There were dozens of jewelers' shops, 
where were displayed beautiful things made of gold, 
silver, ivory, brass, etc., and in all of these shops we 
saw Indian artisans at work. They squat in front of a 
pot of charcoal, and manufacture beautiful ornaments 
with tools of the most primitive kind. Hindu women 
wear beautiful jewelry ; everything an Indian woman 
owns she wears in her nose, on her wrists, in her ears, 
and on her ankles, in the form of exquisitely made 



232 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

jewelry of gold and silver. One woman we saw had 
a silver bracelet on each wrist, and the bracelets were 
certainly four inches wide. On the front porches of the 
poorest houses sat workers in gold and silver, and all 
of them were very skillful. When there was a brief 
let-up in the rain, we left the rickshas, and entered these 
interesting workshops and stores. . . . Then we 
went to the Hindu market where vegetables, fruits, 
meat, etc., are sold. The market is an enormous place, 
occupying the greater part of a block. In addition 
to food, jewelry and fancy goods are also sold at this 
market, and we saw one stall devoted to the sale of 
Hindu books; copies of the Indian paper printed in 
Durban were also displayed. We were the only whites 
in the place ; all the others in the crowd were natives 
of India. The vegetables were small, and many of the 
fruits we did not recognize. The stall-keepers knew 
we were visitors, and not buyers, and were very polite. 
. . . Adjoining the Hindu market, and almost as 
large, was the native or negro market. Two-thirds of 
this place was devoted to an enormous negro restau- 
rant. The negroes did not seem to have much for sale, 
except rice and curry, and this was sold in the restau- 
rant, at so much per bowl. I am certain I saw four 
or five hundred men eating in this native restaurant ; 
and how they talked and laughed! We frequently 
stopped and listened to the roar, which reminded us 
of a women's reception, magnified twenty or thirty 
times. The white market-master told me that the 
blacks had acquired the habit of buying their supplies 
of the Hindus, and that the Hindus next door occasion- 
ally repaid the favor by buying meals in the negro 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 233 

restaurant. But I saw no negroes in the Indian mar- 
ket, and no Indians in the negro restaurant. The 
Hindus were very quiet, serious and busy, but the ne- 
groes were very idle and noisy. The native or negro 
market made me think of a negro church festival. In 
the negro market we saw thirty native doctors. These 
men sold roots and herbs said to be good for various 
ailments; with every purchase, they gave medical 
advice free. The thirty doctors sat together, squatted 
on the floor in front of the roots and herbs they were 
offering, and seemed more intelligent than those around 
them. ... In the Indian market, the thing that 
attracted my particular attention was that sheep heads 
were displayed at all the meat stalls, and every head 
was bloody and dirty, just as it came from the butcher's 
hands. Sheep feet, equally dirty, were also displayed. 
In India the traveler sees a great many shops devoted 
to the sale of cheap candy, cut in square, triangular 
and round pieces. All of it is highly colored; pink, 
green, blue, brown, etc., and seems to be of the nature 
of our "fudge." The same shops are seen in the Hindu 
section of Durban, as the Hindus are constantly eating 
sweets ; this is their dissipation, instead of drinking 
intoxicants. Nearly everything I saw of unusual in- 
terest in India, I saw repeated in the Hindu quarter of 
Durban, but the Hindus here seem much more pros- 
perous than the same class in India. ... I speak 
of all the Indians in Durban as Hindus, but as a mat- 
ter of fact many of them are Mohammedans; my 
waiter at the Marine Hotel is a Mohammedan, but my 
chamber-man is a Hindu. There is not much differ- 
ence between them racially, but the Mohammedans 



234 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

always seem quicker and brighter. . . . We also 
visited a Kaffir brewery, where is manufactured the 
beer of which Kaffirs are so fond. The head-man is an 
Englishman, and Kaffir beer is manufactured under 
public control, to prevent the blacks drinking the white 
man's fire-water. . . . While visiting the Hindu 
stores, we noted that the keepers had borrowed one 
idea from the whites : they had signs out announcing 
"Specially low prices for a few days only;" "Great 
clearing-out sale now in progress," etc. . . . Durban 
has an excellent system of street railways, and the sub- 
urban lines do an express business. At almost every 
stop the motorman gives a package to a negro servant 
who seems, to be expecting it, and, if no servant ap- 
pears, the conductor carries the package into a house. 
The charge is two cents per package. If you buy 
tickets, you can ride on the Durban street cars for three 
cents a section; some long street-car rides we took 
cost us twelve cents each. . . . This is our fifth 
day in Durban. The first day was bright, but a storm 
^of rain and wind began Sunday night, and has con- 
tinued ever since. As I write this in my room, water 
is dropping from the ceiling; probably every roof in 
town is leaking. I have just placed a washbowl on 
the bed to keep the bed dry for tonight, in case the 
rain lets up. (P. S. — Since writing the above, two 
white maids and two Indian men have moved me into 
another room.) If the rain would only cease, we should 
probably find South Africa very much more interesting 
than Australia or New Zealand. . . . The police- 
men of Durban are negroes, and they have the most 
serious and important expressions I have ever seen on 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 235 

the faces of men. And a serious, important expression 
on the face of a barefoot man always amuses me. Any- 
one with grave duties to perform should, it seems to 
me, wear shoes. . . . There is a ricksha stand near 
the hotel, and every ricksha man carries a cow-bell, 
which he rings while on the road to warn pedestrians 
to get out of the way. These bells tinkle half the night, 
and remind me of a pasture wherein every cow is a 
bell-cow, and all of them vigorously fighting flies. 
. . . A good many American manufacturers seem 
to be establishing branches in London. I bought a 
bottle of Pond's Extract in Durban, and found that it 
was manufactured by the Pond's Extract Co., 65 Great 
Russell street, London. I bought a set of auto-strop 
razor blades, and found that they, also, came from 
London. Still, at the stores I find a great many fa- 
miliar articles with only good old U. S. A. on them. 
. . . The charge here for an ordinary ricksha ride 
is six cents. If I am compelled to go up-town on an 
errand, the ricksha man waits, and when I return to the 
hotel, I pay him a sixpence, or twelve cents. In 
coming back from town this afternoon, I faced a 
terrific head-wind, with beating rain, and the ricksha 
man was almost stalled. But the price was only 
six cents each way. ... I cannot recall hav- 
ing seen a single mulatto in this town ; all the negroes 
seem to be of pure blood. Whatever else may be said 
of Englishmen, they seem to be particular in their 
social relations. ... At seven o'clock this even- 
ing, the storm was worse than it has been at any time 
since Monday morning. The evening paper says the 
"Anchises" got away at 4 o'clock this afternoon, and 



236 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

at this writing is probably doing a dance off the coast 
that the passengers will remember as long as they Jive. 
The wind has been blowing a gale four days, and the 
sea must be a thing to be dreaded by this time. 



Friday, March 7. — The destruction being wrought 
by the waves at the beach has attracted crowds daily, 
but a good many did not get to see it until this morning, 
when the storm had considerably abated. Those who 
went to the beach today were disappointed because no 
great destruction was taking place, and abused the 
street railway, which had charged them three cents for 
the ride out. I predict that at the next meeting of the 
town council, several additional measures will be intro- 
duced to Make It Hot for the street railway, which had 
no great show to offer at the beach this morning. Peo- 
ple have already forgotten the magnificent sight the 
company offered them at the beach on Tuesday, Wed- 
nesday and Thursday, for a charge of only three cents, 
including the ride out. I rode out today and was satis- 
fied; I always get along with street railways, as it 
seems to me they offer a good service at a very low 
price. . . . The captain and gunner of the whal- 
ing-ship on which I agreed to make a trip today, called 
on me at the hotel, and said it would be impossible to 
catch a whale even if one should be sighted, owing to 
rough seas, therefore they would not go out. I took 
the two sailor-men down to the fine smoking-room of 
the Marine Hotel, and they seemed ill at ease while 
smoking the cigars and drinking the beverages I pro- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTEALIA, AND AFRICA. 237 

vided. They are rough men, but two better fellows 
I have not met during the trip. I don't suppose I 
ever had any actual intention of going out with them, 
but they thought I had, and came up to the hotel to 
tell me the ship could not go out today. ... I 
regret to notice that in the papers today are references 
to three attempted assaults on white women by ne- 
groes. A Mr. Maurice Evans lectured in Durban last 
night on a recent visit to the United States, and we in- 
tended going, but were prevented by a heavy rain. Mr. 
Evans traveled through our Southern states, and made 
a special study of the negro question. He says our 
failure to solve the race problem is due to attempts in 
the North to make the negro an equal, whereas the 
negro is not the equal of the white man, and cannot 
be made such. Mr. Evans thinks our Southern whites 
would solve the race problem if the Northern whites 
would let them alone. The papers quote him as say- 
ing that an examination of a thousand, or ten thousand, 
average negro skulls will show that the negro is de- 
ficient in brain-power, and that he must be treated 
as an inferior ; kindly and fairty, but always as an in- 
ferior, and subject to strict regulations. The South- 
African system of treating the negro is paternal ; he 
is regarded as a ward. And in the papers of a few days 
ago, I saw a statement that a law was being urged which 
would provide a heavy fine for any white man who 
leased land to a negro, or gave him possession of land 
in any other way ; by gift, purchase, lease, or renting 
arrangement. Wherever you find whites and blacks 
living in the same community, there is a race problem. 
One of the papers of this date, speaking of Mr. Evans's 



238 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

lecture, says : "It is impossible not to be struck with 
the sadness and feeling of something approaching de- 
spair which seem to have been the chief impressions 
left on Mr. Evans by his experiences in the southern 
portion of the United States." ... In South 
Africa a dentist does not call himself a "doctor." I 
saw this sign today : "Mr. Alfred Geary, surgeon den- 
tist." . .... I don't suppose any white family in 
South Africa is so poor that it cannot afford a negro 
servant. Negro men are almost universally employed 
as house servants, and not negro women. Many boys 
are employed to take care of children. Most of, the 
negroes who come to Durban from the interior have two 
or more wives. These they leave at home, to work in 
the fields. The English residents say it is best not to 
teach the negro servants the English language ; that 
a better plan is for employers to learn Kaffir. An 
English-speaking negro servant demands more wages 
than one who speaks only Kaffir, and usually drifts 
to Johannesburg, the boom town of the Transvaal. 
A. capable, all-around man servant gets $2 a week, and 
he is able to cook well, and do all sorts of housework. 
The servants become fond of their employers, and fre- 
quently remain with them for years. The negroes are 
said to be more honest than the Hindus ; all the whites 
I have talked with have referred to the Hindus as 
thieves. But any visitor may see that the Indians are 
a more important class than the negroes. The Indians 
own many big business houses, and at the Hindu mar- 
ket I saw great quantities of fruits and vegetables; 
but almost nothing in the negro market, next door, 
except tobacco, which the negroes raise because they 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 239 

are fond of it. Although the English say one Kaffir is 
worth ten Indians, they admit that Indians are em- 
ployed almost exclusively on the big sugar and tea 
plantations, where the workmen must be painstaking 
and reliable. My impression is that the whites are a 
little jealous of the Indians, and find the negroes more 
easily controlled. . . . Early this morning the 
skies brightened, and we expected a return of pleasant 
weather, but while we were at breakfast, the down- 
pour of rain began for the fifth successive day. Since 
Sunday night the rainfall has amounted to nearly seven- 
teen inches. . . . Natal, of which Durban is the 
largest town, is one of the states of the South-African 
federation. It is not so large as Kansas, being 350 
miles one way, and 150 the other. Natal has 1,200 
miles of railway, and corn, which is the easiest grown 
of all the cereals, is the staple crop. Sugar-cane, tea, 
alfalfa, ostriches, sheep, turkeys, nearly all the 
tropical fruits, and hogs, cattle and horses, are also 
produced. The planting season for corn lasts three 
months, instead of about eighteen days, as with us. 
The rainfall is 42 inches per year. The bulk of the 
farms are of 200 to 1,000 acres, and many stock farms 
are much larger. Land in Natal is worth from four 
dollars an acre up. Natal farm laborers receive $4 
a month, and Indians about the same. It is expected 
that hail will destroy everything in the way of crops 
every fourth or fifth year. It is asserted that the 
European death-rate in Durban in 1910 was less than 
seven per thousand, as compared with a death-rate of 
fourteen per thousand in England and Wales in 1908. 
. . . The Dutch settled in the vicinity of Capetown 



240 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

in 1652, but the English claimed they ran up the British 
flag on the site of that town in 1620. There has always 
been friction between the Dutch (or Boers) and Eng- 
lish. This culminated in the war of 1899-1902, which 
cost the English 25,000 lives and a billion and a quar- 
ter dollars. The Boers had possibly 40,000 soldiers in 
the field, while the English had near a quarter of a mill- 
ion. The Boers were hardy pioneers, and the fight 
they put up is still regarded as one of the wonders of 
the world. Only the Transvaal, and later the Orange 
Free State, fought the English during the Boer war; 
Natal and Cape Colony were loyal to the British. 
. . . The English have also been compelled to fight 
the Zulus for possession of South Africa. The present 
peace with the Boers and natives will probably prove 
lasting, although I occasionally hear predictions to the 
contrary. . . . Six years before Columbus dis- 
covered America, a bold adventurer named Diaz 
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, but means of commu- 
nication were slow in those days, and Diaz's discovery 
\)f a water route to India was not known until several 
years after the death and disgrace of Columbus. . . . 
All South Africa is now in an amicable federation, ex- 
cept Rhodesia, and this will probably come in before 
many years. Other parts of Africa are controlled by 
the Germans, the British, the Belgians, the French, the 
Italians, the Portuguese, etc. Africa is an enormous 
country ; almost as large as all of North America, and, 
in its remotest sections, civilization is getting a hold. 
More pioneering is being done in Africa today than in 
any other country, and, for many years to come, Africa 
will occupy a prominent place in the world's news. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 241 

. . . I can remember very distinctly when Stanley 
"discovered" Dr. Livingstone in the country I shall 
visit shortly in comfortable railway trains, and the 
railway has now been built four hundred miles beyond 
Victoria Falls. Stanley's first expedition into Africa 
was a newspaper sensation, financed by the New York 
Herald, as Dr. Livingstone was not lost, and, when 
Stanley ''found" him, was engaged quietly in making 
maps of the interior. 



Saturday, March 8. — We spent this day traveling 
from Durban to Johannesburg. The distance is four 
hundred and eighty-three miles, and we were twenty- 
four hours and a half on the way, as we left Durban at 
5 : 50 last night, and arrived here at 6 : 20 this evening. 
The distance from New York to Chicago is about a 
thousand miles, and the best trains on the Pennsyl- 
vania and Nev/ York Central make it in twenty hours. 
Formerly they made it in eighteen hours, but the speed 
was so great that travelers complained. The train on 
which we traveled today Avas the Limited, and as good 
as there is in South Africa. The track is narrow-gauge, 
and, as seems the rule on all railroads operated by the 
government, the train was crowded, though we had 
no cause to complain ; we were given a compartment 
to ourselves, 'without extra charge. When we arrived 
at the station last night, we found a placard on the 
window of a compartment, amiouncing that it was re- 
served for "Mr. and Miss Howe." The compartment 
would have easily seated four. It was provided with 



242 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

a washstand, and was practically as good as a compart- 
ment on a Pullman. At ten o'clock, a white porter 
appeared with two bundles of bed-clothing, sealed. 
Breaking the seals, he made up two beds about as they 
are made up on a Pullman. Then the porter presented 
me with two tickets, for which I paid sixty cents each. 
The tickets read: ''South African Railways. No. 
98029. Bedding ticket. From Durban to Johannes- 
burg. Date, 3-7-13. Train No. 192. Amount paid 
2. 6. This ticket must be handed to passenger on pay- 
ment of charge." . . . This is the sleeping-car 
system in South Africa ; two had a compartment in a 
sleeping-car twenty-four hours and a half for $1.20. 
The Pullman charge for a service not much better 
would have been $9, instead of $1.20. There was a 
dining-car on the train, and the charge for dinner was 
75 cents, and for lunch and breakfast, sixty cents each. 
The meals were good, but the car was always packed 
at meal-times, and the force of waiters not large enough. 
Tea was served in our compartment at 7 a. m. and 4 
p. M. ... I have never enjoyed a railroad ride 
more than I enjoyed the ride from Durban to Johannes- 
burg. The weather was cool, and there was no dust. 
We left Durban in a pouring rain, but this morning the 
rain ceased, and by noon the sun was shining. For 
hours we passed through a prairie country which greatly 
resembled eastern Kansas as it was forty or fifty years 
ago. I saw thousands and thousands of acres of what 
seemed to be old-fashioned prairie grass, and when there 
was a cultivated field it was nearly always devoted to 
corn. I saw a good deal of hay-making in progress, 
and in every case the hay-rake was pulled by a yoke of 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 243 

oxen. In several places, negro laborers were cutting 
oats, and the harvester was also pulled by oxen. This 
was the rule in the early days in eastern Kansas ; many 
of the older farmers will remember when oxen were 
used almost entirely for farm work. If I were dissatis- 
fied with my present location (which I am not) , I should 
have no hesitancy in locating in South Africa after 
seeing that part of it lying between Durban and Johan- 
nesburg. The country looks like the best portions of 
the United States, and not one-tenth of it seems to be 
cultivated. We saw a good many sheep, but not one- 
hundredth part as many as we saw in Australia and 
New Zealand, although the grass was much better. 
Altogether, the impression left on my mind was this : 
A surprisingly good country, and very little advantage 
taken of it. . . . I doubt if I saw a corn-field of 
fifty acres; the patches were all small, and weedy. 
In most cases the stalks of the field corn were as small 
as the stalks of our sweet corn. The farming is mostly 
done by negroes ; either as independent farmers, or 
as farm laborers. If some of the corn farmers of 
Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas had this land, it 
would produce better crops. . . . This refers 
mainly to Natal. The rainfall is less toward Johannes- 
burg : I thought I could notice a difference when we 
crossed into the Transvaal a little before noon today. 
Toward Johannesburg, there is more stock-raising ; 
the country looks much like Kansas two hundred miles 
west of the Missouri river. Still, the Transvaal looks 
better than the best parts of Australia I saw. But in 
Australia, the very best is made of everything, while 
here shiftlessness is the rule. The natives (negroes) 



244 TKAVEL LETTERS FROM 

live in round, grass-covered huts, and are a shiftless 
lot. If other portions of Africa are as promising agri- 
culturally as Natal and the Transvaal (and certain 
parts are said to be better), I can easily believe it has 
a great future. But it should be remembered that 
this is the rainy season ; in a few months the country 
will look brown and parched. There is plenty of rain 
along the coast, but in the interior, people long for rain 
as they do in Australia. ... At one place along 
the road, we saw a family of Kaffirs going to town in a 
light wagon to which was attached three yoke of oxen. 
Goats and donkeys, the live-stock of shiftless men 
everywhere, were quite numerous along the way. . . . 
Near Durban we saw young corn and young bananas 
growing together. A half-dozen miles from Durban we 
saw a huge sugar-mill, and surrounding it a Hindu vil- 
lage in which there were several strange temples to 
strange gods. The foundation of one of these temples 
had been undermined by rain lasting six days, and was 
toppling over in the mud. ... At many of the 
stations we saw American agricultural machinery on 
freight cars or on station platforms. ... At one 
station there was a creamery which looked much like 
a similar establishment in the United States ; at most 
stations, negro boys sold milk to the passengers at a 
penny a glass. . . . The cattle here are queer- 
looking ; they are shorter than ours, and usually have 
enormous horns. I saw no highly bred cattle, but the 
native cattle were always fat, and grazing in grass up 
to their loiees. Some of the oxen come from Madagas- 
car, and have great humps on their backs. Oxen are 
as generally worked on farms here as horses are at 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 245 

home; frequently cows are worked with them, and 
when a cow works under the yoke, her calf usually 
travels beside her. In the middle of nearly every 
string of work-oxen, j^ou see a pair of j'earlings or two- 
year-olds being worked to "break" them. Donkeys 
are also extensively worked here ; no disease attacks 
the donkey, whereas cattle often die as do our hogs 
with cholera, and I frequently saw ten to twelve don- 
keys working to one wagon. . . Soon after pass- 
ing into the Transvaal, I noticed that much of the 
prairie land seemed somewhat stony. What we call 
"nigger-heads " were numerous ; reddish-looking stones 
worn into the shape of circular beehives, by long ex- 
posure to the weather. These turned out to be ant- 
hills, so hardened by long exposure to the weather that 
they will turn a bullet ; during the late war, the Boers 
used them for protection. There are countless billions 
and trillions of ants here, and you are never out of 
sight of their hills in the Transvaal. In some places 
the ant-hills are so large that the natives chase out the 
ants, and use the hills for houses. . . . The fences 
in the prairie country are always of wire, and the posts 
of iron, and sod houses, most of them tumbling down, 
are as common as they were in western Kansas thirty 
years ago. . . . The Transvaal is that section to 
which the Boers made their great trek, owing to friction 
with the English along the coast. In the Transvaal 
was later discovered the Johamiesburg gold mines, 
and it was the owners of these mines who brought 
on the Boer war. Should Kansas and Nebraska 
go to war with England, it would not be a much 
more remarkable performance than the Transvaal 



246 • TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

and Orange Free State fighting England, and forc- 
ing it to put a quarter of a million men in the 
field. Early this morning we passed through Lady- 
smith, famous because of the long siege, and through- 
out the day we have seen occasional relics of the war ; 
mainly cemeteries wherein were buried English soldiers, 
and we also saw lone monuments erected in memory 
of special heroes. Mr. and Mrs. May, the fine old 
people we saw embark on the "Anchises" at Adelaide, 
and whom we knew on the long voyage to Durban, had 
a son killed in the Boer war, as Australia and New Zea- 
land, as well as Canada, sent troops to help the Eng- 
lish suppress the terrible Boers. We had heard Mrs. 
May say her son was buried at Sanderton, and we passed 
through that town, and saw the cemetery where the 
young soldier was buried. . . . The country be- 
tween Durban and Johannesburg is what Americans 
call rolling. Small mountains are occasionally seen 
in the distance, but the general effect is like our prairie 
country. At one place we crossed a divide by means 
of a switch-back, and two engines were usually attached 
to our train. . . . Two hours before we left Dur- 
ban, we saw the warship "New Zealand" come into 
the harbor. Immediately on landing, sixty of the offi- 
cers and men left for Johannesburg, and were accommo- 
dated in three sleepers and a dining-car on our train. 
Hundreds of people gathered at the stations to see the 
sailor-men, and Johannesburg will entertain them lav- 
ishly. ... A gentleman told me today of a farm 
in South Africa which is eight miles square. Plenty 
of good land can be bought here at $6 an acre, and the 
English government, much as it is abused, is as good 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 247 

as any in the world. . . . At 5 p. m. we had our 
first glimpse of Johannesburg: small mountains of 
white rock taken out of the different mines, and which 
are known as "the Johannesburg Alps." We stopped 
at suburbs and switched around for more than an hour 
before we finally left the train at the greatest gold- 
mining camp in the world, at 6 : 20 p. m. 



Sunday, March 9. — Johannesburg was a pleasant 
surprise, as was Durban ; it is a new, clean city of 237,- 
000 inhabitants, and up-to-date in all respects. The 
population is about equally divided between whites 
and blacks. It has department stores as big as 
Kansas City, and last night the main streets 
were so crowded that it was almost impossible to 
get along. Although this is a boom town, some- 
thing like but greater than our Cripple Creek, 
prices are not unreasonable. I am staying at the 
Langham Hotel, which is excellent in every way. 
The price is $3.60 per day, including three regular 
meals, and coffee at 7 a. m. and tea at 4 p. m. An or- 
chestra plays in the dining-room during dinner. The 
waiters are imposing-looking Germans, wearing green 
coats, brass buttons, and knee-breeches. Altogether 
it is as satisfactory a hotel as we have encountered ; 
and we were very fond of the Marine at Durban, and 
of the Grand at Wellington. . . . Johannesburg 
is not situated in the mountains, although it has hills 
something like the bluffs along the Missouri river. 
The main town is on a flat, and the surrounding hills 



248 TRAVEL LETTEES FROM 

add an agreeable variety. There is an excellent sys- 
tem of street railway, and the price is three cents per 
section; the fare to the zoological garden is fifteen 
cents. This garden shows most of the game animals 
of Africa, in addition to as handsome a display of 
flowers as one cares to see. A peculiarity of the flowers 
here is that they are almost without scent. While 
coming in from the zoo this morning, the conductor, 
when taking my fare, asked : 

"What part of the country do you come from?" 

I told him from the United States. 

"I know that," he replied; "but what section? I 
am from Georgia." 

This man was James Brady, who served in the Span- 
ish-American war, and came over here to serve in the 
Boer war in a spirit of adventure. Strange as it may 
seem, many men like soldiering, and the risk of battle. 
One can hardly refer to James Brady as a patriot ; he 
was simply a restless young fellow who wanted excite- 
ment. . . . Johannesburg's principal streets are 
well paved, and they are brilliantly illuminated at night. 
I believe the town has a greater number of handsome 
homes, in proportion to population, than any other 
city I am familiar with. It startles an American to 
hear that another country has the "greatest in the 
world" in anything, but South Africa leads the world 
in gold production because of Johannesburg. The town 
is only thirty years old, but there is nothing crude about 
it. Like all exceedingly prosperous towns, its women 
are homely ; in this respect, it reminds one of Kansas 
City and Chicago. The handsomest women are al- 
ways found in dull towns like Quincy, Illinois, and Bur- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 249 

lington, Iowa. By-the-way, "Burlington" is a popu- 
lar word in the English colonies, for some reason. In 
Wellington and Sydney there are handsome restau- 
rants called "The Burlington;" somewhere else I saw 
a big arcade of the same name, and in London a monthly 
magazine is called "The Burlington." . . . All 
printed matter in the Transvaal intended for the public, 
such as railway time-tables, is printed in German as 
well as in English. Which is not surprising, since the 
Boers outnumber the English more than three to one. 
. . . An American negro would scream his head off 
in Johannesburg. The negro here is not allowed to 
ride on the street railways, nor is he allowed on the 
sidewalks. A system of Jim Crow cars was tried when 
the street railways were j&rst built, but the blacks 
wanted to ride with the whites, so they were ordered to 
keep off the cars altogether, A negro servant may ride 
on a street car with his master, but he must sit in a mod- 
est place pointed out by the conductor. A negro ser- 
vant may live in quarters in his master's yard, but if 
he has a family, and works for himself, he must live 
in Blacktown. . . . The Boers were more strict 
with the blacks than are the English. On Sundays, 
the streets are black with natives, as there are more 
than 100,000 in Johannesburg, but not a great many 
are seen on week days ; in the enormous crowds I saw 
on the streets last night, I remarked the absence of 
negroes. . . . The white men here usually speak 
highly of the honesty of the blacks. If the blacks find a 
dishonest one, they promptly report him to the "boss." 
. . . A thing that soon attracts your attention in 
Johannesburg is the great number of negroes who own 



250 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

bicycles. Being refused admission to the street cars, 
they buy bicycles. But the old Boers wouldn't per- 
mit the blacks to ride bicycles. . . . Although the 
natives are treated so harshly, I saw the statement in 
print lately that they possess more than one-third of 
all the cattle in Cape Colony, one-fourth of the sheep, 
produce three-fifths of all the corn, and own one-third 
of all the plows. As they are excellent workers, they 
are really a valuable asset. . . . The Hindus are 
not popular around Johannesburg ; everywhere I have 
been in South Africa, the Hindus are severely criticised. 
. . . In the Cape Colony, the negroes can vote, 
and have many other privileges not accorded them in 
the Transvaal. There are thousands of mulattoes in 
Cape Colony, but very few in the Transvaal. In Cape 
Colony, the negroes have about as many privileges as 
negroes have in the northern sections of the United 
States, but in most other portions of South Africa they 
have fewer privileges than the negroes of Mississippi 
^or Alabama. A white lawyer with whom I lately 
talked, says the race problem here is really a very seri- 
ous one. Many university educated negroes are com- 
ing to Africa from the United States, and making 
trouble. The lawyer also said that the African M. E. 
Church is a source of much trouble, and that there has 
been serious talk of prohibiting it in the Transvaal. 
. . . During my stay in Johannesburg, the papers 
reported a meeting of the South-African Native Na- 
tional Congress. Fifteen chiefs and 200 other delegates 
were present. The chairman delivered his address in 
English, and it was interpreted into several native 
languages. "Gentlemen," said the speaker, "this land 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 251 

is ours, inalienable, a God-given birthright. We do 
not begrudge others a fair share in its treasures, but 
in so doing we do not propose to suffer our inalienable 
rights to be encroached upon. More than is adequate 
and just to our reasonable progress and well-being we 
do not ask, but that we demand with all the strength 
of our being." Continuing, he said that he did not 
consider the natives were being treated fairly by the 
government. In some respects they were subjected to 
"an intolerable state of slavery." They were denied 
a voice in the country's government, even in legislation 
bearing upon their own life and people. They were 
fettered by pass laws, while illiterate men who could 
scarcely writes their names, and whose knowledge of 
the world's history was limited "to the bare kopjes of 
their own backveld," were entrusted with the power 
of governing the natives and their land. The govern- 
ment of the land granted to Indians, Chinese, Syrians, 
and other such races, regardless of character, an un- 
restricted liberty to travel, to trade, and to purchase 
land, while they (the natives) were denied all such 
privileges. (Applause.) 



Monday, March 10. — Johannesburg is possibly the 
most prosperous town in the world. There are six or 
seven thousand English and American miners em- 
ployed on the Rand, or gold reef, which is fifty miles 
long and one mile wide. Johannesburg is the centre 
of this great gold district, and the white miners make 
big wages; they are all either foremen or mine con- 



252 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

tractors, and some of them make $500 a month ; $350 
a month pay to a white miner is not at all unusual. 
The real work is done by the negro miners, who are 
brought here from all over Africa under what amounts 
to indenture. More than a hundred thousand of these 
are employed in the mines, and they receive an aver- 
age of sixty cents a day, and board. They live at the 
mines, in great boarding-houses which accommodate, 
in many cases, two thousand. No women are allowed 
in these compounds, and the miners themselves may 
only leave the compounds with special permits. By law, 
the negroes cannot be worked more than eight hours 
a day in the mines, and none are accepted as workmen 
who do not agree to remain at least six months. The 
white bosses have "stand around" jobs; they do no 
actual labor. The best white miners in the world are 
found here, because of the high pay. The gold-bear- 
ing rock is hoisted to the surface from a depth, in some 
cases, of four thousand feet. It is then run through 
stamp-mills, and crushed, and the gold extracted by 
the cyanide process. The mountains of lime-rock seen 
all along the Rand are composed of the gold-bearing 
rock after the gold has been extracted ; in some cases, 
these dumps are being worked over, the old process 
of extracting gold having been wasteful. This broken 
rock is used for concrete work and for street paving, 
and the mine-owners will pay to have it hauled off their 
premises. . . . On the streets this morning I again 
met James Brady, the Atlanta, Georgia, man whom I 
met yesterday while he was working as a street-car 
conductor. As this is his lay-off day, he spent con- 
siderable time with us. He says conductors and motor- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 253 

men average about $100 a month. He complained a 
good deal of the high cost of living in Johannesburg, 
but it developed that prices are not much higher here 
than in Atchison. 

''Think of it," he said, "a good porterhouse steak 
costs a shilling a pound here." 

Investigation will reveal that the best steaks cost 
twenty-four cents a pound in Atchison. The best 
bacon costs thirty cents a pound here ; that is the price 
in Atchison, next door to eight or nine packing-houses. 
Mr. Brady has not been in Atlanta, Georgia, for four- 
teen years, and said to me : 

"In Atlanta, we could buy good butter for fifteen 
cents a pound." 

I told him he could not do it now, and he was greatly 
surprised to hear of the manner in which prices have 
advanced all over the United States. . . . We took 
a street-car ride, and the price was fifteen cents each 
going out, and fifteen cents each coming back, or ninety 
cents out and back for three of us. It was the longest 
street-car ride possible in Johannesburg ; five sections, 
at three cents a section. . . . Last Fourth of July, 
Brady put an American flag on his trolley-pole, and it 
remained there peacefully from 6 : 30 in the morning 
until noon. At that hour an inspector ordered it down. 
Brady refused to take it down, and was suspended for 
three days. There is another American on the line, 
a motorman, and he tongue-lashed the inspector, and 
was also suspended for three days. . . . Brady's 
father was Captain in a Georgia company in the re- 
bellion; five of his sons were killed in the battle of 
Manassas. Of the one hundred men who originally 



254 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

composed the elder Brady's company, five returned 
safe and sound at the end of the war. The others were 
killed, crippled, or died from illness. . . . You 
perhaps imagine that because the English whipped the 
Boers, the English control the Transvaal. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the present local government, elected by the 
people, is Boer. The Boers in politics are called Na- 
tionalists ; the English are called Unionists, and at the 
recent election the Nationalists won. There is a Labor 
party here, also, but is is not as strong as it is in Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand, or England itself. The Boer 
members of parliament are in a big row among them- 
selves. One leader believes in reconciling the differ- 
ences between the Boers and English, while the other 
is a fire-eater. The conservative man is much more 
popular among the Boers, apparently, than the fire- 
eater. . . . The Boers frequently quarrel among 
themselves. There are two branches of the Dutch 
Reformed Church, and several years ago the warring 
factions armed, and almost engaged in civil war, over 
the interpretation of a passage of scripture. . . . 
Johannesburg has recently opened a new and very hand- 
some public market on the site of the old Coolie village. 
The plague broke out among the Coolies, so their village 
was burned, and now the blacks live in a section further 
out. Hindus, negroes, Chinese and Malays live there ; 
no white resident is permitted in the village, nor is a 
Hindu or other black permitted to live in any other 
section of Johannesburg. Dr. Gregory, a Hindu who 
was educated in Edinburgh and who married a Scotch 
wife, had a large practice among the whites, but when 
the order came segregating the blacks, he was com- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 255 

pelled to move from his handsome house down-town 
to the dirty Coolie village. There are ten to fifteen 
thousand blacks in this village, and many of the Hindus 
are rich ; but they are not allowed to ride on the street 
cars which pass their doors. In Durban, many of the 
Hindus are gardeners ; here, they buy fruit and vege- 
tables, and peddle them in various parts of town, from 
small carts. . . . There is a Jew market in Jo- 
hannesburg which is very peculiar. It is an open field, 
on valuable ground owned by the city, and everything 
in the way of household goods, clothing, etc., is dis- 
played in the open air. Nearly everything offered is 
second-hand, and is bought by negroes. The market 
occupies an entire block, and I found it very interest- 
ing. ... At the markets here, eggs that are guar- 
anteed fresh, sell at three shillings, or 72 cents, per 
dozen, while "farm eggs" are sold at forty-two cents. 
Penguin eggs are collected in large numbers from the 
islands around the coast, and their consumption in 
Cape Town in certain seasons exceeds that of the do- 
mestic fowl. The penguin eggs are palatable, nutri- 
tious, and easily digestible; the "white" is of a sea- 
green color, the egg is twice the size of the usual hen's 
egg, and must be boiled twenty minutes. These eggs 
are sent all over South Africa, and to London. Speak- 
ing of eggs, one morning at the Langham Hotel I saw 
a guest bring two eggs to the dining-room, call a waiter, 
and give orders as to how the eggs should be cooked. 
In a few minutes the man came in to breakfast, and 
the eggs were brought in from the kitchen. . . . 
Today I passed a place called an "American restau- 
rant." This sign was displayed: "A complete meal, 



256 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

including a glass of beer, one shilling." . . . An- 
other peculiarity of the English : When they drive, 
they turn to the left, on meeting another driver ; but 
on the sidewalk, when they meet another pedestrian, 
they turn to the right. 



Tuesday, March 11. — At the meat shops in Jo- 
hannesburg, pickled beef feet are sold as pickled pigs' 
feet are sold in America. . . . The morning news- 
papers of Johannesburg sell at six cents each. The 
best newspapers of New York and Chicago sell at one 
cent. The Transvaal Leader of this morning says the 
rain at Durban continues, and that the storm is the 
worst since 1858. When I was there, it was said at 
first that the storm was the worst in two years ; then 
it was said it was the worst in ten years, and now the 
statement is telegraphed broadcast that the storm at 
Durban is the worst in fifty-five years. It is wonder- 
ful what the Atchison hoodoo can do in the way of 
disturbing nature. The weather in Johannesburg is 
fine. The days are somewhat warm, but the nights 
are quite cool. Except a light shower this afternoon, 
which was agreeable, there has been no rain since our 
arrival. . . . The Transvaal Leader has one de- 
partment I have never seen in any other newspaper. 
Every morning it prints a list of the loaded railway cars 
received in Johannesburg the day before. Imagine a 
Chicago paper printing something like the following : 
"Yesterday there were received in Chicago the follow- 
ing loaded freight cars : Illinois Central, Nos. 100282, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 257 

287689, 159867, 829217," etc., followed by two dozen 
or more railways represented in the city. Such a list 
would take up as much space as the baseball scores. 
. . . We have cantaloupes every day at the hotel, 
and they are surprisingly good. The varieties are new 
to us. We also have roasting-ears, and the proprietor 
tells me they cost six to eight cents a dozen, in quan- 
tities. . . . Four of the guests at this hotel we 
knew as passengers on the ''Anchises." . . . Warned 
by the example of Australia, South Africa has pro- 
hibited the importation of rabbits, except that they are 
permitted in one small island near the coast. . . . 
The fire department made an exhibition run today to 
amuse the sailors from the warship "New Zealand," 
a favorite trick in all American country towns. The 
apparatus here is motor-driven, new, and of the best. 
. . . All the street and railway laborers, and labor- 
ers generally, are negroes, and they receive an average 
of $22 a month. A negro laborer in the United States 
receives more than twice that. The Georgia man I 
met on Sunday says the South-African negroes are no 
better laborers than the negroes of the South. If the 
South-African government should decide that the pros- 
perity of the country depended upon the negroes work- 
ing for a shilling a day, such a law would be passed, 
without regard to the Rights of Man. Chinese labor 
was tried in the Johannesburg mines, and at one time 
there v/ere more than 50,000 Chinese in the country. 
The Chinese gradually demanded more wages, and as 
a result they were ordered to leave South Africa, a fate 
which is now overtaking the Hindus. Many em- 
ployers of labor favor inviting the Chinese to come back. 



258 ■ TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

I saw a statement in a newspaper today that if American 
miners' wages were paid along the Rand, the mines 
would show a loss instead of a profit. . . . The 
Transvaal Advertiser of this morning printed a table 
showing that the gold output of the Rand for February- 
was 734,122 ounces, worth a little more than fifteen 
and a half million dollars. The same table shows that 
the average profits of the Rand gold mines amount 
to $170,000 per day. In South Africa, 184,000 men 
are employed in the gold mines, 8,000 in the coal mines, 
and 35,000 in the diamond mines. Practically all these 
miners are native negroes, so that the negroes are the 
source of the country's prosperity. The negroes are 
compelled to work for whatever the whites decide is 
necessary to keep the country's industries flourishing. 
In many places here, the blacks outnumber the whites 
fifty to one, but the blacks must work for whatever 
wages the whites are willing to pay. If they do not, 
the whites say the blacks are in rebellion again, and 
send for British soldiers. . . . The Transvaal 
Leader, the paper I buy every morning for six cents, 
prints a summary of the news in every issue, and I 
often remark how little real news there is, considering 
that the Leader devotes twelve nine-column pages to it. 
As a matter of fact, there isn't a great deal of real news ; 
the best the newspaper men can do is to make gossip 
interesting. . . . The passion for England here is 
very marked; the bulk of the reading matter in the 
Leader seems to be telegrams or correspondence from 
London. An Englishman will locate in the United 
States, and at once become an American, but in South 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 259 

Africa, New Zealand or Australia, he is more English 
than he was in England. . . . When the new mar- 
ket-house was built in Johannesburg, it was so far out 
of the way that people wouldn't patronize it, although 
it was a magnificent structure 668x230 feet. There- 
upon the street railway company went to the rescue, 
built a line past the new market-house, and gave free 
transfers to and from it on all lines. These were the 
first transfers ever issued in Johannesburg, and the 
people are already inquiring: "Why can't transfers 
be issued in other cases?" I predict that this enter- 
prise on the part of the street railway company will 
result in grumbling and agitation that will finally force 
free transfers generally. The street railway receipts 
here now amount to more than an average of $100 per 
car daily, but with the entering-wedge referred to above, 
look out for a howl for lower fares. The people here 
have never experienced the joy of fighting the street 
railway, and, when they get at it, they will like it as 
much as do people in American towns. . . . All 
the people in foreign countries have, I think, an ex- 
aggerated notion of the prosperity prevailing in the 
United States. Most of the young men I meet are 
anxious to emigrate, and they believe conditions in 
the United States are better than they really are. 
Ours is a great country, but hard work and poverty 
are not unknown in the best parts of it. . . . This 
morning we called at an office building to see a number 
of Americans who have been exiled in South Africa 
many years. An ex-American took us around and 
introduced us to ex-Americans in the various offices. 



260 TKAVEL LETTERS FROM 

We looked so "raw" that our conductor was immensely 
amused. He said to another ex-American, the man- 
ager of a bank : 

"And yet they are surprised that people everywhere 
know they are Americans!" 

I suppose we are called ''raw Yankees" here, as we 
at home call new arrivals from the old country "raw 
Dutch." Our conductor in the office building told us 
later that the elevator man said to him, after our de- 
parture : 

"Excuse me, sir, but were those people Americans?" 

"No," the ex-American replied, "they were Rus- 
sians. Why do you ask if they were Americans? " 

"Because, sir," the elevator man replied, "I couldn't 
understand them when they inquired for you." 

When people talk to us, they talk slowly, and use a 
good many signs, as we do at home when talking to 
foreigners. . . . But so far as looks go, I think I 
have solved the problem. Today I bought a London 
.hat, and wear it with the rim turned down in the back, 
instead of turned down in front. I imagine that peo- 
ple now say of us : 

"The man looks all right, but who is the frowzy- 
looking woman with him?" 

The leading ladies' tailor in Kansas City is a Ger- 
man named Mendelsohn. If Mendelsohn could hear 
the criticism his suits attract in South Africa, he would 
go crazy. . . . Speaking of the English habit of 
turning the hat-brim down behind, instead of down in 
front, as American men wear their soft hats, some Eng- 
lishmen in Africa go to an extreme, and wear the brim 
of their hats turned down all the way 'round. . . ^ 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 261 

At home, I have noticed the quiet amusement with 
which a German-American regards a raw Dutchman 
who has just landed. I think the Americans we meet 
here regard us in the same way. They are polite, and 
glad to see us, but they are undoubtedly amused at 
our appearance, our ways and our talk. ... A 
peculiarity of Johannesburg is that coal mines are oper- 
ated within sight of the gold mines ; and in no other 
gold camp is fuel so convenient. 



Wednesday, March 12. — The first Americans we 
met in Johannesburg are interested in banking, life 
insurance and real estate, and occupy a fine building 
of their own on a down-town corner. One of them is 
T. W. Schlessinger, formerly of New York. Eight 
years ago he was a life insurance solicitor. Today he 
is the controlling power in five different important 
companies, and we hear it said that within two or three 
years he may be the leading man of Johannesburg. 
I. F. Atterbury, manager of the African Realty Trust, 
is not only an American, but he comes from St. Joseph, 
Missouri, which we can see from Potato Hill Farm. 
And what still further endeared him to us is the fact 
that his wife also comes from St. Joseph. Nineteen 
years ago Mr. Atterbury was a real-estate agent in 
St. Joseph, and, as the town was dull at that time, he 
was greatly interested in the prosperity reports that 
came in every little while from Johannesburg, South 
Africa. After his arrival here, he made money, but 
lost it during the business panic following the Boer 



262 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

war. During a part of the war, he was acting United 
States consul at Pretoria. When the war closed, he 
again engaged in the real-estate business in Johannes- 
burg, and has long been a part of the "American in- 
fluence" that undoubtedly exists here. . . . Soon 
after we met Mr. Atterbury, we all started out in an 
automobile to call on his wife. But we found her out ; 
she had gone to call on an American friend, Mrs. Mark 
Gary, in one of the suburbs. So we went out there, 
on the way passing through many of the most wonder- 
ful sections of this wonderful town. Mrs. Atterbury 
and Mrs. Gary had gone down-town, we found, on ar- 
riving at the Gary home, so we sat down on the ve- 
randa and waited for them. Both Mr. and Mrs. Gary 
are from Galifornia, and their home is one of the show 
places of Johannesburg; because of its lavish display 
of flowers, for one reason. The maid served tea on 
the veranda, and the time passed pleasantly and rap- 
idly in listening to Mr. Atterbury talk of South Africa. 
He looks like a typical American, in spite of his nine- 
teen years' continuous residence here. . . . Pres- 
ently Mrs. Gary and Mrs. Atterbury arrived from down- 
town, and Mrs. Atterbury said to us : 

"I haven't lost my American accent, have I?" 
And she hadn't; nor had Mrs. Gary, which is not 
surprising, since she visited her home in Galifornia last 
year. But poor Mrs. Atterbury has been here nine- 
teen years. 

"Isham," she said to her husband, with genuine 
American enthusiasm, "I'm going home with them. 
May I?" When I took a kodak picture of the party, 
Mrs. Atterbury wondered that she "didn't break the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 263 

camera," which no one will dispute is the genuine Amer- 
ican language. Over here, people use the term "You 
see," a good deal, which is equivalent to our "Don't 
you know?" An Englishman says, "We can't have 
the ocean in London, you see," while an American says, 
"He was the smarter man, and had it all his own way, 
don't you know?" Mr. Atterbury used the expression 
"You see" a few times, but otherwise we talked only 
the Kansas-Missouri-California language. At 1 p. m. 
we left for town, the driver nearly running over every- 
body on the way. 

"The only trouble with this man," Mr. Atterbury 
said, "is that he runs too fast, and I can do nothing 
with him." 

Was there ever a man who could control his auto- 
mobile driver? . . . South Africa is the paradise 
of the lover of flowers. At a recent flower show in 
Pretoria, one hundred and seventy different varieties 
of roses were exhibited. But all flowers here are almost 
without scent, which is true of all countries where 
flowers are particularly abundant and gro^vn without 
trouble. . . . Grass-seed is not so^\ti broadcast 
here, but is drilled in, in rows. If well watered, it 
spreads and covers the ground. The grass-seed most 
generally used comes from Florida, or of a variety which 
originated in Florida. . . . The "American in- 
fluence" has been very marked in Johannesburg. In- 
deed, had it not been for an American, probably the 
Rand (pronounced "Rond") would be abandoned to- 
day, instead of producing a daily profit of nearly $200,- 
000. In 1885 the mines apparently "played out," 
and it was John Hays Hammond, an American engi- 



264 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

neer, who encouraged mine-owners to dig deep, and 
strike the vein further down. The Johannesburg ore 
is of low grade, much of it averaging only $4 per ton, 
while a little of it is worth $25. The ore from the great 
Homestake mine at Lead City, South Dakota, is worth 
only half as much, yet many fortunes have, been taken 
from this mine. The Homestake mine at Lead City 
is the real source of the Hearst magazines and news- 
papers. ... A good many years ago, three thou- 
sand American mining engineers were employed along 
the Rand, and a few of the best ones received from fifty 
to seventy-five thousand dollars a year, but now the 
number employed does not exceed four hundred. I 
have heard it hinted that as soon as the Americans 
taught the English how to mine and extract the gold 
from the Rand ores, there were bickerings over salaries, 
and the Americans went elsewhere. The American 
mining engineers are highly regarded for many reasons, 
but especially because of their quickness and cleverness 
in meeting difficulties. I have also heard it hinted that 
the existence of the Kimberley diamond mines is due 
to an American. Johannesburg is more like an Ameri- 
can town than any other we have seen. This is another 
result of the "American influence ;" the business meth- 
ods here are snappy, after the American fashion. . . . 
Mr. Atterbury says that the raw native, taken from the 
farm and trained, makes a very efficient and faithful 
servant, but that the missionary negro is no account. 
Mr. Atterbury says that a bishop of the Methodist 
Church who had done much work in Africa, once said 
to him : 

"I don't know that I have ever actually converted 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 265 

a native to a better life. The natives so easily for- 
get my teaching that I am sometimes troubled with 
the fear that all my work has been in vain." 

Wherever I go, I hear grave doubts expressed as to 
the missionary experiment. . . . Most of the Ameri- 
cans I meet here were originally in sympathy with the 
English, so far as the Boer war was concerned, but 
ended by being in sympathy with the Boers. . . . 
There is a man here named Sir Abe Bailey. It seems 
to me that a man with a title should not be called 
"Abe," but "Sir Cecil," or "Sir Chauncey," or some- 
thing else equally euphonious. . . . Natives are 
publicly whipped here, when they do not behave. 
And when a native is killed in the mines or elsewhere, 
the papers do not print his name ; they refer to him 
simply as a "native." . . . This evening we dined 
with Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury and their young gentle- 
man son, Manfred, at the Grand National Hotel, where 
they live. Manfred Atterbury was born in Maysville, 
Missouri, but came here as a baby, and has never been 
back to the country of his birth. He is exactly like 
an American boy, except that he occasionally uses the 
expression, "You see," which is used so much over 
here that I am contracting the habit myself. He has 
attended English and Boer schools, and, like the Texas 
congressman, doesn't know where he is at. His mother, 
who took charge of her son's education, as good mothers 
do, tells some amusing stories about it. One day the 
boy was sent to the foot of his class for pronouncing 
"Chicago " as it is pronounced everywhere in the United 
States. The teacher said the correct pronunciation 
was "Chic-a-go." The young man also got in trouble 



266 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

because he pronounced "Ohio" as he had heard his 
father and mother pronounce it : the teacher said the 
correct pronunciation is "0-e-o." The teacher was 
an Oxford man, and the EngHsh school books in use 
named only four American seaports — none at all on 
the Pacific. The history in use devoted only seven 
lines to the American Revolution, treating it as a 
trifling affair in which the English gave the Americans 
their independence. . . . (When Americans abuse 
the English, it is customary for them to say, "Of course 
the English are, in many respects, a great people." 
Mr. Atterbury said it at this stage of the conversation.) 
. . . Probably you know that in England and its 
colonies, the song, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," 
is sung very frequently, particularly at banquets and 
other places where grog is passed around. Mrs. Atter- 
bury says that once an equal suffrage meeting was held 
in the banqueting-room of the Grand National. Only 
women attended, and they frequently sang, "For He's 
a Jolly Good Fellow." An equal suffrage meeting was 
being held in the banqueting-room of the Grand Na- 
tional the night I was there, but, greatly to our sur- 
prise, no windows were smashed. Several stout ladies 
appeared who, I thought, certainly had rocks under 
their aprons, but the meeting was quiet, and the no- 
ticeable protuberances turned out to be the middle- 
age spread instead of rocks. . . . The American 
party finally broke up at 10 : 20 p. m., with a statement 
from Mrs. Atterbury that an English paper here lately 
referred to an incident as happening in America in 
"the state of Cincinnati." . . . We handled the 
English rather roughly, but I venture to say they get 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 267 

even ; indeed, taking one roast with another, no doubt 
they are far ahead of us. I intend to have an Ameri- 
can party at my hotel on Friday evening, and Mark 
Gary will have another on Saturday, when we will 
again attempt to catch up with the English. When the 
English roast us, I hope they are as fair as we are, and 
frequently say : 

"Of course, in some respects the Americans are a 
remarkable people. No one will care to deny that." 



Thursday, March 13. — This morning Mr. Atter- 
bury found it necessary to go twenty miles into the 
country, to look at a farm, and took us with him. R. 
A. Davis, government horticulturist for South Africa, 
also accepted an invitation to go. Mr. Davis was 
born in England, but spent several years in California ; 
he says he learned all he knows about horticulture in 
California, as that state is undoubtedly headquarters 
for horticultural information. In his way, he is as 
noted an expert as our F. D. Coburn, and it was a priv- 
ilege to spend several hours in the country with him. 
Here is a South-African apple story I had direct from 
Mr. Davis. His son has an apple orchard of three 
acres, containing three hundred trees ten years old. 
Last year the younger Mr. Davis sold his apples for 
ten thousand dollars, or more than $3,000 an acre. 
These figures are gross ; the cost of picking and mar- 
keting the fruit was fifteen per cent. We had two 
punctures during the ride, and Mr. Davis told me an- 
other big South-African story while the driver made 



268 Travel letters from 

repairs. The most prosperous farming country in the 
world is the ostrich district in Cape Colony ; instead 
of owning one automobile, as do our successful corn and 
wheat farmers, the ostrich farmers own two and three 
automobiles each. The best ostrich country is known 
as the Oudtshoorn district, and is probably 70x60 
miles in extent. Mr. Davis told of one irrigated farm 
of four hundred acres and 1,800 birds for which an 
offer of $560,000 was lately refused. The ostrich 
farmers are nearly all Boers, although many Jews live 
in the district to trade in the feathers. It is said that 
more than one hundred of the farmers in the bird dis- 
trict are worth more than $250,000 each. Alfalfa is 
grown extensively. One acre of alfalfa will graze five 
ostriches, and the average ostrich will annually pro- 
duce feathers worth $25. Ostriches are raised in Cali- 
fornia and elsewhere, but conditions for ostrich farm- 
ing are nearest perfection in South Africa. A good 
many ostriches run wild in Africa, but feathers from 
the wild birds are not good. Ostrich eggs or living 
birds cannot be taken out of South Africa, and some 
growers have fancy strains of birds that are worth from 
$2,000 to $2,500 per pair. One South-African ostrich 
king has devoted so much time to ostriches, and lived 
among them so long, that both Mr. Davis and Mr. 
Atterbury agreed that he had grown to look like an 
ostrich. . . . Mr. Davis says South Africa is a 
better fruit country than California, and that it will 
produce better oranges with less effort. . . . The 
two punctures caused us to be late, and Mr. Atterbury's 
automobile driver, whom he called Bristow, fairly flew 
over the ground. I sat on the back seat with Mr. At- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 269 

terbury and Mr. Davis, while Adelaide rode in front 
with the driver. Mr. Atterbury frequently tapped 
Bristow on the back with his cane, and said: "Too 
fast!" and Bristow slowed up for a time, but in a few 
minutes would be running faster than ever. The 
South-African roads are naturally good, as they are in 
western Kansas. Our road lay along the railway, and 
every mile or two there was a stone block-house, 
erected by the English during the Boer war, for the 
protection of the railroad. This line of block-houses 
extends from Capetown to a point four hundred miles 
beyond Johannesburg, a distance of something like 
fourteen hundred miles. The Boer war almost ruined 
South Africa, and resulted in the death of 25,000 Eng- 
lish soldiers, and probably 4,000 Boer soldiers. In the 
concentration camps of the English, it is said 22,000 
Boer women and children died, because of conditions 
which resembled the conditions under Weyler in Cuba. 
England spent millions and almost billions in the war ; 
yet it was brought on by a handful of alien Jews. War 
is the most wicked, senseless thing men engage in. 
. . . No one disputes that the Boers were terrible 
fighters. Mr. Davis recalled a limerick composed by 
an English soldier during the war. It ran in this way : 
"There was an old Boer who hid in a trench with a bul- 
let-proof lid. And when the English came nigh, he 
said with a sigh, 'I can bag the whole lot' — and he 
did." . . . South Africa does not encourage immi- 
gration. The Boers are in control, and they do not 
want new-comers, since they know that the immigrants 
must come mainly from England, and that every immi- 
grant means another vote against them. . . . Mr. 



270 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Davis told me that New-Zealanders are much more 
popular in England than Australians ; the Australians 
have entirely too much admiration for the United 
States to suit England. . . . The flower we call 
cosmos grows wild here; we saw many acres in full 
bloom. . . . Wherever we have been in South 
Africa, evidences of prosperity are abundant. The 
country is growing rapidly, and every man who can 
afford it is buying a piece of land with a view of put- 
ting out an orchard. Almost in sight of Johannesburg, 
good fruit land may be bought for $25 an acre. I make 
this statement on the authority of Mr. Atterbury, a 
practical real-estate man. . . . Possibly you think 
of the Boer farmers of South Africa as hard-working 
men. As a matter of fact, they are all gentlemen 
farmers ; they do not go into the fields, and do hard 
manual labor, as do our farmers — no one works here 
except the negroes. Mr. Atterbury often goes into 
the country to look at land, and says he usually finds 
Ihe Boer farmers sitting around the house, talking with 
the neighbors. Occasionally they go out into their 
fields, to see that the negroes are working properly, 
but they are above manual labor. During the morn- 
ing, we met a good many Boer farmers with ox teams 
of from three to a dozen span ; but the farmers always 
rode in the wagons, while their negroes walked and 
drove. In working ox teams here, a negro boy always 
walks ahead, and leads the head span, while two negro 
men walk behind, and use whips. . . . We re- 
turned to Johannesburg at 2 p. m., undecided whether 
to call the driver ''Bristow, the Aviator," or "Flying 
Bristow." 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 271 

Friday, March 14. — Yesterday evening, in com- 
pany with Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury, we left Johannes- 
burg for Pretoria, capital of the Transvaal and of the 
South-African United States. The distance is thirty- 
eight miles, and the road good. Flying Bristow made 
the trip in an hour and three minutes. Thirty-eight 
miles an hour in an automobile does not sound very fast, 
but ride it over country roads in South Africa, and you 
will agree that it is a terrific pace. I never before trav- 
eled at such a speed in an automobile. There are many 
hills on the way to Pretoria, and Flying Bristow crept 
up these, as the Atterbury machine is not a good hill- 
climber. It is a Talbott, made in England, and dur- 
ing the past two years has traveled 40,000 miles in at- 
tending to the affairs of the African Realty Trust, of 
which Mr. Atterbury is general manager. On a level, 
and down the hills, I have no doubt we traveled fifty 
miles an hour yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Atterbury 
rode in front, but had no more influence with Bristow 
than has her husband. When we stepped out of the 
machine at Pretoria, I remarked to Mr. and Mrs. At- 
terbury that we had just had a very speedy ride, where- 
upon Flying Bristow smilingly said that Mr. Schless- 
inger, his other employer, would consider our pace a 
slow one. So Mr. Schlessinger seems to be responsible 
for Flying Bristow. And if Mr. Schlessinger doesn't 
look out, he won't live to see his five institutions take 
a high place in South-African finance, for Bristow un- 
doubtedly drives too fast. He has never had an acci- 
dent, but one is coming to him, and I sincerely hope that 
when it arrives, neither Mr. Atterbury nor Mr. Schless- 
inger will be in the machine. . . . Mr. and Mrs. 



272 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Atterbury spent a good many months in Pretoria dur- 
ing the Boer war ; part of the time Mr. Atterbury was 
American consul. On one occasion the Enghsh shelled 
the Boer forts nearly all day, and every shell passed 
over the Atterbury home ; one exploding shell broke a 
window in the American consulate. Mr. and Mrs. 
Atterbury say that a shell, in passing high above you, 
shrieks and screams like a living thing in distress. 
They know Pretoria as well as you know the town in 
which you live, so that we had excellent guides in our 
visit to the capital. ... I had a room on the sec- 
ond floor of the Grand Hotel, facing the old Boer cap- 
ital just across the street. During the war. President 
Krueger (Oom Paul) and members of the war board 
met daily in a room just opposite my room ; people 
used to sit on the hotel veranda and watch the war 
board in session. We visited the modest home of 
President Krueger this morning, and the care-taker 
showed us over the one-story house. In one of the 
nine rooms is displayed three hundred bouquets of 
immortelles sent to Oom Paul's funeral. A few of the 
bouquets were made of solid silver, and a few of beads ; 
in addition to these, many of which were sent by kings 
and princes, three hundred bouquets of perishable 
flowers were sent. Oom Paul (Uncle Paul) died in 
Switzerland, having been compelled to leave his coun- 
try during the war, but his body is buried in Pretoria. 
Mrs. Krueger died in the house we visited. She was 
a plain old woman, the wife of a farmer, and refused 
to go to Holland or Switzerland when it seemed im- 
possible to prevent Pretoria falling into the hands of 
the British. Not only Lord Roberts, but Lord Kitch- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 273 

ener, were compelled to come to South Africa and take 
personal charge of the campaign against the Boers. 
Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury saw Lord Roberts ride into 
Pretoria at the head of his troops. Across the street 
from Oom Paul's residence is the church where he 
often preached, for he hated the devil almost as much 
as he hated the English. . . . The Boers were won- 
derful soldiers, and, being in their own country, they had 
a great advantage over the English. When they cap- 
tured English prisoners, they didn't know what to do 
with them, so turned them loose. It is related that Gen- 
eral DeWett captured a certain English regiment three 
times, and this fact caused that particular regiment to 
be known as "DeWett's Own." . . . Pretoria has 
65,000 people, and is a beautiful city. A new capitol 
building is approaching completion, at a cost, every- 
thing counted, of nearly ten million dollars. It is an 
enormous and beautiful structure of marble and granite, 
situated on a hill overlooking the city. The erection 
of this building is bitterly resented by the English as a 
useless waste of money, but the Boers are in control 
of the government, and for sentimental reasons insist 
upon this enormous structure at Pretoria, Oom Paul's 
late capital. An Englishman told me lately that the 
Pretoria capitol will cost two-thirds as much as West- 
minster, the seat of the English parliament. . . . 
I speak of Pretoria as the capital of the United States 
of South Africa. As a matter of fact, it is only the 
administrative capital, as the South-African congress 
meets at Capetown, while the South-African supreme 
court sits at Bloemfontein. The capital is thus di- 
vided between three cities. Our Washington is the 



274 ' TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

capital of one hundred million people, whereas there are 
only eight million in all South Africa : one million 
whites, and seven million colored. The United States 
has nearly twice as many negroes as South Africa. 
. . . I am told that the average negro here does not 
pay much attention to liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness ; he takes whatever is offered him and says noth- 
ing, but the negroes of the Basuto tribe are disposed 
to criticise English methods. The Basutos are well 
armed, and it is said could put an army of twenty thou- 
sand horsemen in the field on a few days' notice. It 
is the Basutos who are expected to finally make the 
English trouble, and, when they begin, they may have 
the assistance of many other negroes, and the sympathy 
of the Boers. . . . When the Boers of the Trans- 
vaal and the Orange Free State fought the English, it 
is well known that they expected the assistance of the 
Cape Colony Dutch; but the Cape Colony Dutch, 
who are very numerous and very rich, got cold feet, 
and failed to show up at the first battle. But for the 
promise of the Cape Colony Dutch to join, there would 
have been no Boer war ; and had they joined, the war 
would still be going on. . . . On our way to Pre- 
toria, we passed a big camp of English soldiers. All 
English soldiers will shortly be removed from South 
Africa, the country being so peaceful that they are no 
longer needed. We also passed over one of the battle- 
fields of the Boer war, which is now a peaceful pasture 
devoted to cattle. ... A son of Wm. E. Glad- 
stone is governor-general of South Africa, and lives in 
Pretoria. . . . Pretoria has the finest zoological 
garden in South Africa. It was established by the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 275 

Boers, and has since been fostered and improved by the 
English. It contains a rhinoceros, and the animal is 
so tame that the children feed it. But how viciously 
these animals charged Colonel Roosevelt in his articles 
in Scribner's Magazine! . , . The zoo is not only 
interesting because of its rare animals, but is located 
in one of the handsomest flower gardens I have ever 
seen. Next door is a museum containing many South- 
African curios. . . . At 2 : 30 in the afternoon we 
left Pretoria in a drizzling rain, which continued all the 
way to Johannesburg. Owing to slippery roads and 
no chains. Flying Bristow did not reach Johannesburg 
until about 4 o'clock. 



Saturday, March 15. — This evening we were guests 
at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Gary, both formerly 
of California. They employ four native servants, all 
Zulus. Seven years ago, they were in Durban for some 
time, and a Zulu boy named Abel became attached to 
Mr. Cary. Soon after their return to Johannesburg, 
there was a knock at their kitchen door. Mr. Cary 
opened the door, and there stood Abel. 

"Your Durban boy has come to work for you," Abel 
said. 

And he has been with the Carys ever since, as cook. 
He receives $22 a month, having become an expert. 
Abel lives with the other servants in a detached house 
in the yard, and each receives the followihg rations : 
A half-loaf of bread per day ; one can condensed milk 
per week ; one-quarter pound of tea per week ; two 



276 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

pounds of sugar per week; two pounds of corn-meal 
per week; fresh meat once a week. This meat con- 
sists of a shilling's worth of "boy's meat," probably 
a pound and a half of beef, which is boiled with vege- 
tables, usually carrots, which the Zulus love. The 
black servants here are known as ''boys," and the 
butchers sell a special kind of meat for them, which is 
called "boy's meat." Mrs. Gary serves out the ser- 
vants' rations once a week, and her grocer puts up the 
tea in quarter-pound packages, the sugar in two-pound 
packages, etc. The food is cooked in Mrs. Gary's 
kitchen, but eaten in the detached house where the 
servants live. . . . While we were at the dinner 
table I expressed a desire to see Abel, the cook, and 
Mrs. Gary sent for him by Sampson, the waiter. Abel 
came, bowing and smiling, into the room, remained a 
few moments, and then disappeared in confusion. He 
is a single man, about thirty years old, and is now sav- 
ing up his money to get married. . . . Sampson, 
the waiter, is a black man of about the same age, and 
has been married some time. He gave fifteen cows for 
his wife. She lives somewhere in Zululand, and Samp- 
son sees her only once a year. Among the Zulus, a 
family of girls is valuable, as the father can always 
sell them at a good price. Sampson is one of the most 
capable waiters I have ever seen at a private dinner, or 
at a dinner of any other kind. He is very quiet in his 
movements, and, when he offers anything to the guests, 
he stands at a very respectful distance. While idle, 
and standing behind his mistress, he looks so respect- 
ful, and so concerned about the dinner, that all guests 
haust admire him as much as I did. When I saw him, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 277 

he wore a suit of white duck, made in American fashion. 
In addition to waiting on the table, Sampson does the 
washing and ironing, and assists the garden boy in 
caring for the flowers, the vegetables and the chickens. 
At the usual private dinner, you observe the lady of the 
house keeping a sharp eye on the waiter, although ap- 
parently engaging freely in conversation, but Sampson 
was so capable that Mrs. Gary was not at all nervous. 
When I am a guest at a private dinner, it makes me 
feel more natural and at home to see things go wrong 
occasionally, but Abel and Sampson did such excellent 
team work that there was not the slightest friction to 
comfort me. . . . The Gary servants are kept 
busy constantly, and they will cheerfully work until 
eleven o'clock at night, if necessary. They are en- 
titled to a vacation of ten days every year, but Abel, 
the cook, has been away but once in six years. Every 
time they leave the house they must have a pass, cer- 
tifying that they are good boys, regularly employed, 
etc. Every negro you see on the streets of Johannes- 
burg has a pass ; otherwise he is liable to arrest. The 
blacks pay two shillings a month to the government 
for this pass privilege, and when a white man employs 
a new servant from the country, he must have him 
registered at the office of the police. Mrs. Gary says 
her negro boys particularly dislike nagging; and I 
think this is a characteristic of every human male, 
white, black, red or yellow, that ever drew the breath 
of life. . . . Mr. Gary has in his employ a negro 
man who has six wives. This man works in Mr. Gary's 
office down-town, but lives with the other servants at 
the Gary home. He says he often whips his wives, on 



278 TRAViEL LETTERS P'ROM 

general principles. He cheerfully takes orders from 
Mr. Gary, but it humiliates him to take orders from 
Mrs. Gary; having six wives of his own, it irritates 
him to be ordered around by a woman. . . . Samp- 
son, the waiter, does the sweeping and scrubbing in 
the Gary home, but the beds are made and looked after 
by a white maid. Mrs. Gary has a very handsome 
flower garden, and a special boy is regularly employed 
to look after it. As it is in bloom summer and winter, 
he is kept very busy, even with the occasional assist- 
ance of Sampson. The Garys have an automobile, 
but the driver is a white man ; blacks are not allowed 
to run automobiles here. . . . It is related that 
the negroes were once greatly excited in Johannesburg 
over a rumor of a Kaffir uprising. One woman said 
to her black boy : 

"You wouldn't kill your missus, would you?" 

"Oh, no," the boy replied ; "boy next door kill you, 
^nd I kill his missus." 

The affair, it seemed, had all been arranged, and 
very delicately at that. This boy's name was "Ma- 
chinery." The blacks take any name they hear used 
among the whites, and "Machinery" is a very common 
name in Johannesburg. ... At the Gary home, 
when I was there, domestic ducks, baked, were a part 
of the dinner. A considerable quantity was left after 
all had been served. 

"Will you get what is left over?" I asked Mrs. Gary. 

"You bet I will," she laughingly replied, using an 
American expression to amuse the American guests. 
With our black servants at home, they always get what 
is left over from a dinner, but in a South- African home, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 279 

the servants get only what is served out to them at the 
begmning of every week. . . . Everywhere in 
America, women believe that there is nothing better 
for a salad than a whole tomato on lettuce leaves, and 
Durkee's yellow dressing poured over the tomato. 
Mrs. Gary had it, except that Abel made the dressing. 
We also had apple pie, and Abel's crust, made of beef 
suet and butter, would have done credit to any cook. 
. . . Mrs. Gary says that when she announced her 
engagement to a man in South Africa, all her friends 
inquired : 

"Is he a missionary?" 

People at home have a vague notion that all the 
whites in South Africa are missionaries, but I have seen 
none, and heard little of their operations. . . . We 
went to the Gary home in a rain-storm, and it was still 
raining when we returned to the hotel at 10 o'clock at 
night. Four years ago, rain fell here forty-two days 
and nights, according to citizens of Johannesburg. 
This, it seems to me, breaks the record by two days. 
The rain here is very erratic, and usually falls at the 
wrong time. The rainfall for the past twenty years 
has averaged twenty-six inches, but the rainfall is nine 
inches short this season. . . . The rain continues 
at Durban, and when the warship "New Zealand" left 
for Australia late this afternoon, there was a down- 
pour of rain, and the crowd on the docks was therefore 
small. . . . Four years ago, on the 17th of August, 
ten inches of snow, the first ever seen here, fell in Jo- 
hannesburg, and all business was suspended while the 
people engaged in snowballing. 



280 . TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Sunday, March 16. — This afternoon I attended a 
baseball game in Johannesburg ; a deciding game be- 
tween clubs which had won six games each. The 
players were nearly all miners from California and Colo- 
rado. There were probably seven hundred spectators 
present, and although most of them were Americans, 
only one of them wore an American hat. I was the 
one exception, and some were disposed to guy that 
when I passed in front of the grandstand. The hat 
generally worn by the men here is a fuzzy affair made 
in London, and many of them are of a greenish color. 
The hat can be wrapped up and put in a traveling-bag, 
and is generally worn with the brim turned down all 
the way 'round. A great many caps are also worn. 
. . . The game was exactly like a very good ama- 
teur game in the United States, except that several 
of the players were elderly. One player, a doctor, was 
as old and fat as I am, and I'm in no condition to play 
baseball. I was told that this doctor is the enthusiast 
who keeps the game going in Johannesburg. Two of 
the grayheads were about the best players in the game ; 
one of them was a man named Wilson, and he was a 
noted base-stealer. One player was called "Denver." 
"Come to life, Denver," a spectator cried, when he 
went to bat, and "Denver" didn't do a thing but smash 
the ball on the nose for a home run. Another player 
was called "C. C," and I found that his nickname was 
"Cripple Creek," the name of the American mining 
camp he came from. One of the pitchers was called 
"Texas," and he won the game, 6 to 4. American 
baseball slang was constantly coming from the specta- 
tors, and I could have easily imagined myself in an 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 281 

American town had the men present worn different 
hats. I looked over the audience a good many times, 
and it seemed that every man present had in some way 
lost a little of his American identity. In the chaffing 
from the grandstand, English pronunciations could be 
detected, though every man around me was probably 
an American. . . . An unusual feature of the 
game was that almost no boys were present. When a 
foul went over the fence, some one would remark : 
"Another boy in," but the only baseball enthusiasts 
here are grown men who have played the game, or seen 
fine exhibitions of it, in the United States. No ad- 
mission was charged, but a man took up a collection 
to pay expenses, just as is done at games in the smaller 

country towns of the United States We 

ate lunch today with an American family, and they told 
us that the most famous girls' school in South Africa 
is at Wellington, Cape Colony. It is run by two Amer- 
ican women, and most of the better class girls in South 
Africa are educated there. All the teachers are Ameri- 
can women, and the result is that all the students ac- 
quire many American ways, habits and pronunciations. 
It is generally said here that this Wellington school is 
doing more to Americanize South Africa than any other 
single influence. . . . American life insurance men 
stand very high all over the world. A South-African 
life insurance man told me today that every new fea- 
ture of foreign companies is borrowed from America. 
. . . Possibly you will remember that years ago. 
Prince Napoleon, a son of the Empress Eugenie, was 
killed by savages. This occurred in Natal, of which 
Durban is the seaport. The young prince came out 



282 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

here with an English regiment, in a spirit of adventure. 
The Zulus cut this regiment to pieces; the catastro- 
phe was almost as complete as was the Custer massa- 
cre on the Little Big Horn river, in Montana, in 1876. 
. . . The original Dutch who settled in South Africa 
were the same sort of people who settled in New York, 
and called the place New Amsterdam. The settlement 
of the Dutch in Cape Colony and in New York oc- 
curred at about the same time. . . . The word 
"Boer" means farmer, but it is applied to all descend- 
ants of the old Dutch stock. . . . American resi- 
dents here greatly regret the exaggerated scandals con- 
stantly appearing in American papers. In America, 
a decent man is often abused unjustly and untruth- 
fully, whereas in England the great scandals with plenty 
of foundation, are usually hushed up. The newspapers 
and magazines of England and its colonies are not as 
independent as the American press, and more generally 
owned by ''the interests." This statement will, I be- 
lieve, be generally admitted by the English. The 
American press is not only free; it often carries free- 
dom too far, and prints unjust and untruthful criti- 
cisms. These publications are read by Englishmen, 
and Americans living abroad never hear the last of 
them. . . . The tea habit being general in the 
English colonies, there are a great many tea-rooms. 
One was raided in Johannesburg last night, and a large 
number of arrests made. Think of a tea-room being 
raided by the police! . . . But here is something 
still more unusual : An Episcopal rector in Capetown 
attempted to introduce High Mass into his services, 
and the controversy has reached the newspapers. The 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 283 

vestrymen are against High Mass, but the pastor stands 
firm, and says he is within his rights. 



Monday, March 17. — We have spent this day in the 
old Dutch town of Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange 
Free State in the days before the Boer war. It has 
thirty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of 
them negroes. Polly's Hotel Cecil, where we are stay- 
ing, is very comfortable, and the price is only $3 a day. 
I came to the Hotel Cecil on the recommendation of a 
Boer lawyer I met on the train. He lives somewhere 
in the interior, and is here to attend a sitting of the su- 
preme court. The lawyer is the first Boer I have be- 
come acquainted with ; he was a Boer soldier during 
the war, and, being taken prisoner, was sent to India, 
where he remained eighteen months. The Orange Free 
State had no grievance against the English, but went 
to war because it had a defensive alliance with the 
Transvaal. Although Oom Paul is a famous figure in 
history, he was quarrelsome and unreasonable; he 
made many demands of the English that a proud peo- 
ple could not decently grant. But when the war be- 
gan, the Orange Free State became the centre of hostil- 
ities, and all the men between the ages of seventeen and 
seventy were drafted. The English couldn't afford to 
lose, and they burned houses and destroyed fields as 
ruthlessly as did Sheridan in the Shenandoah valley. 
It was a terrible affair, but Oom Paul, with his excess 
of piety and patriotism, undoubtedly dragged an un- 
willing people to the slaughter. President Steyn was 



284 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

not as well known as President Krueger, but he was 
a better man, and better balanced. Steyn, who is 
still living here, but in ill-health, is a highly educated 
man, whereas Krueger could barely write his own name. 
... Owing to Easter, the railroads are now selling 
tickets at half-fare, so that we traveled here for two 
cents a mile each. This is the regular fare in Kansas, 
where we are not blessed, or cursed, with government- 
owned railways. . . . The Orange Free State, for- 
merly a republic, is now a state in the South-African 
union. It has seventeen members of parliament, and 
sixteen of them are Boers. The seventeenth is a Boer, 
but a supporter of all English measures. Some of the 
sixteen Boer members are sons of English fathers, so 
that it will be seen that politics makes strange bedfel- 
lows in South Africa, too. ... A Boer farmer 
does not pay his negro farm hand to exceed S2.50 a 
month. In addition, the farm hand receives enough 
,corn-meal to keep him, and such other food as he can 
pick up. Corn-meal is the staple food on the farms 
here, for Boers as well as negroes. The Boers are al- 
ways expressing indignation because the English are 
spoiling the negroes by paying them big wages. The 
Englishman who drove us about this morning in a Ford 
automobile, at $2.50 an hour, pays a negro man $10 
a month, and the negro boards himself. Such liberality 
as this greatly irritates the Boers. And this town negro 
has almost nothing to do ; he only cares for six horses, 
two carriages and an automobile. The Englishman 
who drove the automobile talked all the time, and his 
talk was mainly abuse of the Boers. ... I have 
frequently remarked that the English are very unre- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 285 

liable in their pronunciations. Some of them refer to 
a horse as a 'orse, while others pronounce the word as 
we do. In London, there is a famous place, the Hotel 
Cecil. It is universally called the Hotel Sessil in Lon- 
don, but in Bloemfontein, the capital of an English 
colony, there is a hotel of the same name, and it is called 
Hotel Cecil ; the word pronounced as it is spelled. 
. . . I don't know how it is generally, but on Mon- 
day, March 17, 1913, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, 
South Africa, was the dullest town I have ever visited. 
The handsome stores were empty, and I wondered that 
the merchants did not close up. In dull towns, pretty 
women are always numerous, and we saw more pretty 
women in Bloemfontein than in any other town in 
South Africa. ... I believe I have frequently re- 
marked in these letters that South Africa is the laziest 
country in the world for white people. Today I saw 
a negro driving a public carriage. Beside him sat a 
white man, who collected the fares, and managed 
things ; but the white man would not consent to do the 
actual work of driving. When a white mechanic ac- 
cepts a job here, he asks, "Where are the boys?" 
meaning, "Where are the negroes to do the work under 
my direction?" The labor problem has solved itself 
in South Africa. When a tolerably good man will work 
for thirty-seven cents a day, and board himself, an em- 
ployer really has no room for complaint. ... In 
Bloemfontein, negro women are employed as chamber- 
maids at our hotel ; elsewhere we have seen only cham- 
ber-men, who worked under the direction of white 
maids. The negro men are more industrious in South 
Africa than the women, now that they are civilized, but 



286 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

in the old days of savagery, the women did most of 
the work. . . . Near Bloemfontein is a fort large 
enough to accommodate four thousand English soldiers, 
but the place is almost deserted ; England no longer 
fears war in South Africa. . . . The window in 
my room looks into an open-air theatre; I can see 
everything that goes on on the stage, and hear every- 
thing that is said. I went to bed tonight before the 
show was half over. Educational films of great value 
may be had, but manufacturers of films say the people 
prefer the foolish melodramas with which you are all 
familiar in connection with moving-picture shows. 
Sometimes I fear that the general run of the people have 
wretchedly poor taste. The main show tonight was 
built around a woman tight-rope walker. This woman 
was a society queen, but her father met with reverses, 
and she became a tight-rope walker in a circus, re- 
fusing to marry a high-born and wealthy lover because 
. of the change in her fortunes. The high-born and 
wealthy lover was entrusted with an important mis- 
sion ; to carry certain valuable papers, and a girl clerk 
of an opposition concern was employed to follow him 
and secure the papers. The girl clerk fell in love with 
the man, and refused to rob him, but became a fury 
when he met his former sweetheart, the tight-rope 
walker, in a circus. The girl clerk caused the high- 
born man to be kidnapped, and locked in a top room 
in a fourteen-story building, but the tight-rope walker 
rescued him by rigging up a rope to the building oppo- 
site, and carrying him on her back. It was an idiotic 
performance an hour and a half long, but the people 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 287 

in the audience greatly enjoyed it. . . . My friend, 
the Boer lawyer, says the Orange Free State is much 
more prosperous now than before the war, although 
for two j^ears afterwards it seemed hopelessly wrecked. 
But the British government loaned the people money, 
and they soon recovered. The Boer lawyer made an- 
other statement that surprised me ; he said that taxes 
are lower now than when the Orange Free State was a 
republic, and that every citizen has as many liberties 
as he had then, and more opportunities to prosper. 
This is rather an unusual statement for a captured 
subject of a republic to make about a government 
headed by a king. ... I never knew until the 
Boer lawyer told me that a good many Boers — possibly 
forty — have been given titles by the English king. 
The chief justice of the South- African supreme court, 
which meets at Bloemfontein, is a ''Lord," and there 
are many inferior titles, such as "Sir." . . . The 
negroes of Bloemfontein are compelled to live in what 
the English call "locations;" that is, in villages where 
there are no whites. We visited one of these today, 
and found the blacks had all kinds of shops, restaurants, 
hotels, etc. In front of one of the grocery stores was 
about the biggest pile of watermelons I have ever seen. 
. . . The vegetable market of Bloemfontein is in 
the public square of the town, and the vegetables are 
hauled in with ox teams. Negro women pick up the 
droppings of the cattle, and take the stuff home in 
baskets and pans carried on their heads. Reaching 
home, they plaster it against the sides of their houses 
to dry, and afterwards use it for fuel. Every negro 



288 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

woman I saw engaged in this unusual occupation car- 
ried a baby on her back. The negroes breed like rab- 
bits, but the infant mortality among them is large. 



Tuesday, March 18. — This morning at 9 o'clock 
we left Bloemfontein by train for Kimberley. The 
hotel porter carried our baggage into a compartment 
for four, and said : 

"You are to have this to yourselves all day. I have 
arranged it." 

I thought it was simply the talk of a somewhat fresh 
but obliging hotel porter; but he didn't do a thing 
but deliver the goods. And, what is more, the train 
conductor frequently came into our compartment, and 
pointed out the sights of interest. ... I have 
known railroad men all my life, and been familiar with 
their practice of buying butter and eggs on the line, 
where they are cheaper, and carrying them home. 
The railroad men of South Africa do the same thing ; 
the conductor told me that he buys eggs along the line 
at thirty cents a dozen when they are frequently 75 
cents at the division point where he lives. He also 
buys his meat out in the country; a dressed sheep 
weighing eighty pounds costs him $4.80, so that he 
gets his meat at six cents a pound. Sometimes pota- 
toes sell in South Africa at $11.50 for a sack of 165 
pounds, and poor people pay three cents for every 
potato they buy in small quantities. On this run the 
conductor makes a round trip of 210 miles a day, which 
occupies him eleven hours, He says he earns about 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 289 

$120 a month, but in order to do this, he is compelled 
to get in forty days in a month. The engineer makes 
$5 for a day's work of eleven hours. , . . On the 
way we passed a flock of thirty or forty ostriches graz- 
ing in a field, like cattle, but this isn't considered a very 
good ostrich country. We also passed through the 
Paardeburg battle-field, on the Modder river, where 
General Cronje surrendered 4,000 men to a superior 
force of British. There are two cemeteries on the field, 
in which are buried the English and Boer soldiers who 
were killed in the battle. The Modder river battle- 
field does not look unlike the Custer battle-field on the 
Little Big Horn river in Montana. Indeed, the coun- 
try between Bloemfontein and Kimberley does not 
look unlike the dry country in Montana. . . . We 
saw almost no cultivated fields on the way, but a great 
many cattle, and a few sheep. There is not a town 
between Bloemfontein and Kimberley : it is a frontier 
country, and the railroad has been in operation only 
four or five years. A man I met on the train says that 
in his section of the Orange Free State the soil is black 
and rich, and that fine crops of corn are raised ; but 
I have seen no such country. He lives in a country 
town of 800 people, off the railroad, and says he pays 
only fourteen cents a pound for the best beef, while 
butter sells at 24 cents, and eggs at from 18 to 30 cents. 
In his country, the Boer women do their own cooking, 
but hire negroes to wait on them, and do the rough work. 
An ordinary negro house servant receives $4 a month ; 
aparticularly good one, $1.25 per week. . . . Kim- 
berley, as you approach it by railroad, looks like Jo- 
hannesburg, though it is much smaller. You see the 



290 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

same mountains around the mines, but at Kimberley 
the mountains are composed of blue mud that has been 
taken from the mines, washed for diamonds, and then 
piled up in waste heaps. The country is not unlike 
that around Johannesburg : large hills in every direc- 
tion, and a rolling desolate country between them. 
Kimberley has warmer weather than Johannesburg, 
and we struck it on a tremendously hot day. . . . 
The first thing you notice at Kimberley is the great 
number of mulattoes, whereas there are almost none 
at Johannesburg or Durban. . . .1 was told at 
Johannesburg that the hotels at Kimberley were abom- 
inable ; they were so generally abused that I hoped to 
find them better than their reputation, but the Royal 
Palace, which I was told was the best, is the worst ho- 
tel I have ever patronized. And in an advertisement, 
I read that the Royal Palace was the ''Hotel de luxe" 
of Kimberley. I am writing this in my room by the 
right of a tallow candle, as the electric light refuses to 
work. The hall servants (negro women) are the most 
slovenly creatures I have ever seen, and there does not 
seem to be any head to the place ; I don't know who 
runs it, but whoever he is, he doesn't give much time 
to his job. . . . There are probably a half-dozen 
really excellent hotels at Bloemfontein ; some of them 
only half patronized. Will some one please tell me 
why one of the good hotels at Bloemfontein, an in- 
significant country town, was not built at busy, hustling, 
prosperous Kimberley? .... Johannesburg is a 
modern, beautiful city; Kimberley is a mining camp, 
with narrow, irregular streets. It has many good shops, 
but many of the people said to me : 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 291 

" No one lives in Kimberley because he likes the town ; 
we only remain here to make money." 

Johannesburg people are proud of their town, and 
they have reason to be, but Kimberley people are al- 
ways apologetic. The population is thirty thousand, 
a large number of the inhabitants being negroes and 
Hindus. The rich mine-owners have race-tracks, clubs 
and resorts, but cannot be very comfortable, owing to 
the dust and the heat. The few Americans I have seen 
here are tanned until they are as brown as Indians, and 
they do not say much in praise of the town except that 
it is the greatest diamond camp in existence. 



Wednesday, March 19. — The De Beers Company 
represents one of the greatest corporations in the world. 
You hear of De Beers in every conversation when in 
Kimberley. De Beers owms private cars for use on 
the railways ; De Beers gives millions to public enter- 
prises, and to the government ; De Beers owns parks, 
hotels, street railways, and eight of the greatest dia- 
mond mines in the world. . . . De Beers was a 
Dutch farmer on whose land diamonds were found. 
He never made much out of the discovery, and has 
been dead a good many years, but, like our John Brown, 
his soul goes marching on. Cecil Rhodes and Alfred 
Beit were the real geniuses of Kimberley and its dia- 
mond fields, and they are represented in monuments 
here, but De Beers is heard of much more frequently 
because his name was given to the trust which took over 
the mines. . . . Diamonds were originally dis- 



292 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

covered in South Africa in 1867, by some Dutch chil- 
dren playing on the Orange river. Three years later, 
the great Kimberley deposit was found, and now the 
output is twenty-seven million dollars a year. It is 
a saying around Kimberley that if the De Beers com- 
pany should put on the market all the diamonds it 
has on hand and could produce, diamonds would sell 
at a shilling a gallon, but the De Beers company only 
sells as many as it can get a good price for. Diamond- 
mining, according to experts, will continue at Kimberley 
for at least a hundred years ; it has not been thought 
necessary to make figures beyond that time. South 
Africa produces ninety-five per cent of the diamonds 
of the world, and the De Beers company is the principal 
factor in the diamond-production of South Africa. 
The De Beers company does not represent the De Beers 
family, but many noted English and French capitalists, 
with a sprinkling of Americans ; the diamond trust 
is- one great trust in which Americans have little inter- 
est. . . . Originally, the diamond mines at Kim- 
berley were divided into thousands of claims, 31x31 
feet, but Cecil Rhodes saw that diamonds would soon 
become very cheap unless conditions were changed; 
so by hook and by crook he formed the great De Beers 
trust, which now produces only as many diamonds 
as the world will pay high prices for. Prosperous 
America takes the greater part of the output, and dull 
times in America means dull times in Kimberley. 
Alpheus Williams, an American, is general manager 
of the De Beers company, and many of the officials 
under him are Americans. There are other diamond 
mines in South Africa, including alluvial diggings, and 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 293 

the Premier mine near Pretoria, where was found the 
great Cullinan diamond, which weighed, before cutting, 
3,025 carats, or a pound and a quarter. But Kimber- 
ley is the centre, and will remain so, unless other dis- 
coveries are made. At the end of 1908, it was esti- 
mated that eleven tons of diamonds, valued at $350,- 
000,000, had been found at Kimberley. Diamonds 
weighing over an ounce are not infrequent ; the largest 
found at Kimberley weighed over four ounces. . . . 
Before the passage of the Diamond Trade Act, thefts 
amounted to five million dollars a year, but the De 
Beers company regulated stealing as well as output, 
and the losses are now insignificant. . . . The 
finest diamond-cutting is lately being done in New York, 
and not in Amsterdam, as formerly. The diamonds 
cut in New York show more fire than diamonds cut 
in Amsterdam ; they have a greater number of facets, 
and represent finer and better work. Cutting adds 
forty per cent to the value of diamonds, and an attempt 
is being made to put a tax of 20 per cent on all uncut 
diamonds sent out of South Africa. No cutting is 
done here, and the passage of such a law would add 
enormously to the country's labor roll. . . . The 
average man, in thinking of a diamond mine at Kim- 
berley, imagines a great open hole in the earth, and 
thousands of men working at the bottom of it. As a 
matter of fact, no such mining is now done in Kimber- 
ley, although visitors may see great holes in which 
such mining was formerly carried on. Diamonds are 
now mined very much as gold is mined. Shafts are 
sunk to great depths in the earth, and drifts run in 
every direction from the bottom. Some of these shafts 



294 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

are more than three thousand feet deep, and the dia- 
mond dirt is hoisted and treated very much as gold- 
bearing rock is hoisted and treated. . . . Dia- 
monds are found in blue dirt, in what the miners call 
"pipes." These pipes are the craters of extinct vol- 
canoes, and taper toward the bottom like a funnel. 
The pipes are round, as may be seen in the old open 
workings, some of which are a thousand feet deep. The 
deepest working in any ''pipe" is now at a depth of 
three thousand feet, but a diamond drill has been sent 
down a thousand feet further without the blue dirt 
giving out; so no one knows how deep they are. 
. . . The old open holes in the ground were found 
very expensive to work at a depth of eight hundred 
or a thousand feet, so the blue dirt is now hoisted by 
means of modern cages operating in timbered shafts, 
as coal is hoisted ; down below, drifts are run, and the 
jDlue dirt hauled to the hoisting-shafts as is done in 
coal-mining. As the blue dirt is exhausted, the shafts 
are sunk deeper, and drifts run lower down. The 
"pipe" at the biggest diamond mine at Kimberley is 
three hundred yards across at the top, and, as I have 
already said, this tapers toward the bottom like the 
funnel you use in pouring vinegar into a jug. The 
Premier mine, near Pretoria, is very much larger than 
any mine at Kimberley, being eight hundred yards 
across at the top. This great Premier mine, which you 
hear little of, mines forty thousand tons of blue dirt 
per day, and employs twelve thousand men, as against 
twenty thousand employed in all the Kimberley mines. 
The Premier dirt, however, is worth only one dollar 
per ton, whereas that at Kimberley averages something 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 295 

like three times as much. . . . Briefly, the process 
of finding the diamonds is as follows : The blue dirt in 
which the diamonds are found is brought to the sur- 
face precisely as coal is hoisted, and mined in about 
the same way. It is then placed in little iron cars, and 
hauled to a level field, where it is spread over the sur- 
face to a depth of two feet. This is done to permit 
the weather to disintegrate the dirt, and render its 
washing easier. Today I saw a field of four thousand 
acres covered with this blue dirt. It will remain out 
in the weather a year before it is treated in the washing- 
mills. . . . You might pause a moment and think 
of that four-thousand-acre field, covered to a depth of 
two feet with the blue dirt in which diamonds are found. 
The four-thousand-acre field I saw represented the out- 
put of only one mine ; there are eight in the Kimberley 
district, only two of which are knowTi to be duffers, as 
they saj^ here; that is, of little value. . . . And 
you may rest assured that this four-thousand-acre field 
is carefully guarded; it is surrounded with a barbed 
wire fence fourteen feet high, and on top of the fence 
are four wires spread out in such a way that no one could 
possibly climb over. At night, the fence is illuminated 
with electric lights, and there is a patrol of armed 
guards day and night. But you might be turned loose 
in the four-thousand-acre field, and not find a diamond 
in a year ; the process of finding them is very intricate, 
expensive, and difficult. Many of the natives who work 
in the diamond mines have never seen a diamond : they 
see only the blue dirt. . . . After the blue dirt has 
lain out in the weather a year, and been plowed up at 
intervals with steam plows, that all portions of it may 



296 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

have a chance at the sun, it is washed in enormous mills, 
and reduced in the proportion of one to four million : 
that is, for every pound of diamonds found, four mill- 
ion pounds of blue dirt are mined, hoisted, exposed in 
the field a year, and then run through the washing-mills. 
. . . In these washing-mills, the blue dirt is first 
crushed between rollers, and then run through shaking 
washing-pans three different times. What is left is then 
taken in cars to another mill, called the pulsator, and 
here the precious dirt is again washed three times. 
Finally the diamonds and the heavier pebbles remain- 
ing after six washings, go in a stream of water over a 
shaking-pan, the bottom of which is covered with vas- 
eline. The diamonds stick to the vaseline, for some 
reason yet unexplained, while the pebbles roll away 
with the water. The diamonds on the screen are then 
easily collected and sorted. Some of the sorters, 
greatly to my surprise, were negroes in charge of white 
men. . . . Today I saw the result of one day's 
washing from one mine; a pile of rough diamonds, 
many of them as small as pin-heads. One of them was 
said to be worth a thousand dollars. Dozens were of 
fairly good size, but the bulk of them were very small. 
These small diamonds will be used in cutting the big 
ones. There were many straw-colored diamonds, and 
some of them were black ; the black ones will be used 
in diamond drills. It seemed to me that there were 
half a pint of these diamonds ; Adelaide says a pint. 
But anyway, three or four thousand men, aided by the 
most enormous machines I have ever seen, work a day, 
and turn out — what? A half-pint or pint of bright 
stones of no actual value except in cutting glass and 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 297 

in diamond drills. The diamonds when found are 
in all sorts of shapes, but some of them look somewhat 
like diamonds after they have been cut. When taken 
out of the washing-machines they look like ordinary 
rock crystals ; but they do not flash or sparkle. Cut- 
ting gives them that qualit3^ The De Beers company 
last year made ten million dollars profit, I am told, 
and I am also told that one gold mine at Johannesburg 
last year made half that amount. . . . The min- 
ing of the blue dirt is done by natives who live in com- 
pounds, or quarters, and who are never permitted to 
leave the place until they quit, or are discharged ; but 
no native is employed who will not agree to work at 
least four months. Today I visited one of these com- 
pounds, occupied by 2,500 natives. The place looked 
to be a thousand feet square. In the centre is a place 
where the men bathe after coming from underground. 
The houses where the men sleep form the square, and 
thirty men are provided with sleeping-bunks in one 
room. The bunks are in tiers, three deep, and re- 
minded me of my quarters on the ship "Maunganui" 
between Wellington and Sydney. ... In front 
of the houses the men do their cooking, at open fires, 
with wood furnished by the company. The men earn 
an average of eighty-two cents a day each, and are 
compelled to board themselves. They usually live in 
messes, one man in the mess doing the cooking for a 
week. The company has stores in the compound where 
all sorts of provisions may be had at about cost. . . . 
The men come from the interior, and, when they ar- 
rive, are given a number. This number is retained 
until the man quits, or is discharged. There is a sys- 



298 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

tern of piece work, and some of the men make $1.25 a 
day. The eight-hour system prevails, but the sys- 
tem of team work is such that all the men work steadily ; 
the company sees to it that there are no shirkers. So 
the De Beers company has the services of excellent 
workmen at an average cost of eighty-two cents a day. 
There is a modern hospital in the compound, and men 
who are injured are treated free, and, in addition, re- 
ceive their usual wages while laid up. The compound 
is much cleaner than an ordinary negro village, and 
many of the men remain with the company for years. 
. . . There is a good deal of water in the Kimber- 
ley mines. In one of them, 25,000 gallons an hour is 
pumped without trouble from a depth of 1,500 feet. 
. . . The blue dirt is hauled from the mine to the 
field, where it is exposed to the weather for a year, in 
iron cars holding about a ton each. The cars are 
pulled by an endless cable, and one of the sights of 
^Kimberley is these cars going and coming without at- 
tendance on a double-track railway two or three miles 
long. The cars run in bunches of three, about twenty 
yards apart, and reminded me of ants coming and going. 
. . . When the blue dirt is ready to be treated, it 
is hauled to the washing-mills in the same cars, and in 
the same way. At the washing-mills there is a large 
residue known to contain no diamonds, and this is car- 
ried to the top of the dump and thrown away, and thus 
are formed the gray mounds seen around the town of 
Kimberley. . . . The Transvaal government has 
an interest in the Premier diamond mine near Pretoria, 
and gets sixty per cent of its profits. The government's 
share amounts to two and a half million dollars a year. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 299 

Whenever a diamond mine shows a disposition to 
amount to a good deal, the De Beers company buys it. 
The stockholders in the De Beers company have grad- 
ually acquired a large interest in the Premier mine, 
so that there is a "gentlemen's agreement" in the dis- 
position of diamonds. ... A great deal of haul- 
ing is done from Kimberley to points off the railroad, 
and donkey teams are used in freighting. Every time 
I go on the streets I see donkey teams of ten to fourteen 
span hitched to enormous freight wagons. The don- 
key teams are usually driven by three Kaffirs. . . . 
The favorite vegetable in South Africa seems to be cab- 
bage. At the public markets I see particularly big 
stacks of it, but little else. In the public market of 
Kimberley, vegetables are placed on the ground ; I 
saw string beans lying on the ground, in the filth of the 
market-place, this morning. . . . Kimberley is 
very dusty and dirty. The days are about as hot now 
as they are at home in July and August, but the nights 
are much cooler. An American woman who has lived 
in South Africa nineteen years, says she has never slept 
a night without blankets over her. ... I was fre- 
quently told in Kimberley I should look up a man 
named Brink, the only man in the town who could give 
away diamonds, if so disposed, and not be responsible 
to anyone. I did not see Brink, but I saw a man who 
sent me permits which enabled me to see most points 
of interest. The De Beers officials are very polite to 
visitors, and anyone who comes recommended may 
easily see all there is to see. . . . Kimberley has 
one long business street which is very creditable, but 
outside of that the town does not look very well. Rain 



300 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is very scarce, much scarcer than at Johannesburg, and 
when the wind blows, all doors must be closed, owing 
to the dust from the mine dumps. It is much hotter 
here in summer than in Johannesburg, and general 
conditions of living worse. I shouldn't mind living in 
Johannesburg, but I don't believe I could be content 
in Kimberley. 



Thursday, March 20. — Today we traveled from 
Kimberley to Bloemfontein, and the same polite con- 
ductor was in charge of the train. He not only gave 
us a compartment to ourselves, but presented me with 
a Zulu war-club which I am bringing home as a sou- 
venir. When the Zulus go to Kimberley to work in the 
mines they are not allowed to take their war-clubs into 
the compounds, and sell them at low prices. The one 
I have is a fancy affair, and probably the late owner 
Avorked on it for two weeks. It looks as though it has 
been in action, and has probably cracked a good many 
heads. . . . We were compelled to wait nearly 
three hours at Bloemfontein for a train to Johannes- 
burg, and dined at Polly's Hotel Cecil. Mr. Polly is a 
model hotel man, and knows his business so well that 
his place is constantly crowded, while the opposition 
hotel, just across the street, and a newer and larger 
place, is almost deserted. It is surprising what a clever 
man can do to a dull one ; if Mr. Polly wants the larger 
and newer hotel, my prediction is that he will have it 
in six months. . . . We walked about Bloemfon- 
tein for an hour in the moonlight. I like this town, be- 
cause it is dull, and the people are consequently polite. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 301 

I have always been accustomed to dull towns, and like 
St. Louis better than Chicago because St. Louis people 
are not so struck on themselves. Every citizen of 
Chicago is as badly spoilt as a pretty woman. . . . 
It being the night before Good Friday, which is a holi- 
day here, there was a rush of passengers for Johannes- 
burg, and the friendly conductor could not get us a 
compartment to ourselves. But I was quartered with 
two very interesting and polite men in a compartment 
for four, and rather enjoyed the night ride. . . . 
Let the passenger conductors on American railroads 
prepare to scream with horror and indignation over an 
incident I am about to relate. The train on which we 
rode from Bloemfontein to Johannesburg was composed 
of twelve coaches, nearly all of them used as sleepers 
at night. The conductor not only took up the tickets, 
and looked after the train, but he acted as porter in all 
the sleepers, and made up the beds. The crowd was 
so large that we did not get our beds made up until 
midnight, although we left Bloemfontein at nine o'clock. 
We paid sixty cents each for the use of the beds, when 
we finally got them. The beds were clone up in sepa- 
rate bundles, two sheets, two pillows and two blankets 
in each bundle, and the conductor of the passenger train 
was compelled to take these out of lockers, and change 
all the seats into beds. He had no help whatever, and 
all the time he was at work, passengers were snarling 
at him in an impudent way. I have never before seen 
anything like it anywhere. At every station the con- 
ductor was compelled to go out to the platform, and, 
when the train started, he didn't say "All aboard," but 
"All seats." Translated, "All seats" means: "The 



302 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

train is about to start ; all passengers take their seats." 
. . . After we got to bed at midnight, country boys 
were constantly racing through the corridor outside, 
and looking into our compartment for seats. We could 
not lock the door, and, although the train was crowded 
when we left Bloemfontein, we took on passengers at 
every station. In American sleeping-cars, you en- 
gage a sleeping-berth in advance, and after bedtime 
the. cars are quiet ; no racing through the aisles. Here 
you take your chance of getting a bed. A similar train 
on an American railway would have had a train con- 
ductor, a Pullman conductor, and a porter in each 
sleeping-car. The door of our compartment was 
thrown open a dozen times during the night, but my 
two companions, important mining men, were accus- 
tomed to it, and were not annoyed. The beds were 
narrow, but clean and comfortable ; I had no fault to 
find except the racing of country boys through the corri- 
dors. There were three of us in a compartment that 
would have seated eight. I suppose the country boys 
had a right to chase us out, and demand that five of 
of them be given seats in the compartment, but for- 
tunately they did not do it, and we slept a little to- 
ward morning. 



Friday, March 21. — We returned to Johannesburg 
at 8 o'clock this morning, and it was a little like get- 
ting home. We found two excellent rooms awaiting 
us at the Langham, as the proprietor expected us, and 
we soon forget the discomforts of the night ride. We 
found an invitation to dinner awaiting us at the hotel, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 303 

and among other agreeable guests we met at this agree- 
able affair was Edwin N. Gunsaulus, American consul. 
Mr. Gunsaulus of course keeps in touch with American 
affairs, and he gave us a good deal of news from home. 
The consul is a cousin of Rev. Frank Gunsaulus, the 
noted American preacher and lecturer, and comes from 
a town in Ohio smaller than Atchison. Another fact 
that endeared him to me is that he formerly ran a 
weekly newspaper, and was editor, publisher, business 
manager, reporter, and one of the type-setters. . . . 
I may as well tell here of the reprehensible conduct of 
an American now a resident of Johannesburg. I refer 
to Isham F. Atterbury, formerly of St. Joseph, Mis- 
souri, but now manager of the African Realty Trust. 
I expect the American women to be as indignant over 
his conduct as the American passenger conductors will 
be over the treatment of the conductor of the train on 
which we traveled last night. Mr. and Mrs. Atter- 
bury were also guests at the dinner, and the story I 
shall relate of Mr. Atterbury's conduct I had first-hand 
from his wife's lips. Mr. Gunsaulus also heard the 
story, and I called his attention to it particularly by 
recommending that, as American consul, he do some- 
thing about it. . . . The story is as follows : For 
years Mrs. Atterbury kept house, and slaved, as Amer- 
ican women do, in preparing delicacies for her husband 
to eat, in order that she might keep him good-natured. 
But human endeavor has a limit, and Mrs. Atterbury's 
slaving for her husband's comfort finally resulted in a 
collapse, and a trip to a sanitarium. After her partial 
recovery, they went to an English boarding-house, 
which Mrs. Atterbury declares is worse than an Ameri- 



304 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

can boarding-house, to live. And here is where Mr. 
Atterbury's baseness developed : he ate as heartily of 
the hoarding-house fare as he had ever eaten of his wife's 
cooking. . . l Although the incident happened 
years ago, Mrs. Atterbury is still mad about it. "And," 
she added, in telling of her wrongs, "some people say 
I am a pretty fair cook. After that, I quit the kitchen 
for good, and have been boarding ever since." . . . 
Their young gentleman son, Manfred Atterbury, is 
afraid to take sides in the controversy, but he did say 
that his father doesn't pay much attention to what he 
eats ; that when he goes to the table he usually carries 
American newspapers or magazines with him, and does- 
n't eat anything at all unless his attention is called to 
the fact that the body requires a certain amount of 
nourishment. . . . The American women I meet 
here all say American men are more considerate of their 
wives than the men of any other nation. I believe that 
at home we men are rather unpopular as husbands, 
and that our conduct attracts a good deal of unfavor- 
able criticism from American wives; but abroad we 
are everywhere toasted because of our devotion to our 
women-folks. ... At the dinner tonight, an Amer- 
ican woman said : "Another reason I want to go home : 
I want to see pretty girls again." There are not many 
pretty women over here, whereas America is full of 
them ; particularly in dull towns. . . . Another 
guest at the dinner tonight was H. T. Hofmeyer, a 
prominent Boer lawyer of Johannesburg, and who has 
just served two terms as mayor. He is much inter- 
ested in American newspapers, magazines, books, and 
citizens. The ex-mayor and Mr. Gunsaulus, the Amer- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 305 

ican consul, were quite impatient with me because I 
had arranged to leave Johannesburg at 10 p. m. on Mon- 
day evening, whereas they said no train left at that 
hour. So we all took a walk to the railroad station, to 
get the facts. It turned out that I was right about 
it, and the consul and Mr. Hofmeyer walked all the 
way home with me, in explaining how they happened 
to be mistaken. . . . Merchants everywhere work 
the words "reduction" and "cut prices," for all they 
are worth. Wherever we have been, we have en- 
countered "reduction" sales, and merchants side by 
side abuse each other in the placards displayed. "This 
is a real reduction sale," one placard read ; "do not be 
deceived by false pretenses elsewhere." One shoe 
store in Johannesburg displays this sign: "Shoes for 
next to nothing." Every storekeeper thinks he is a 
public benefactor, because of his low prices. 



Saturday, March 22. — When I left home I was 
told that the name of this town is pronounced Yohon- 
nesburg by its citizens, but I find that they call it 
"Joburg" almost universally. ... In Durban, 
the best people ride in rickshas; here, these vehicles 
are used very sparingly. A law has been passed 
whereby their use will be entirely prohibited in two 
years. It is claimed that the ricksha men become 
overheated while rmining, and contract consumption. 
. . . A sign frequently seen in Johannesburg reads : 
"This house and stand for sale." It is equivalent to 
"This house and lot for sale." ... I was out this 



306 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

afternoon with five Americans, and at 4 p. m. we went 
into an enormous place to drink a cup of tea. There 
were certainly fifty girl waiters, and hundreds of cus- 
tomers. The tea-room included a long balcony above 
the sidewalk, and similar places are very numerous in 
Joburg. I am told that tea-drinking is one English 
habit American residents soon acquire. . . . The 
ordinary natives work long hours here. This evening 
I heard a boss say to a gang of street laborers : "Re- 
member that we begin work Monday morning at 5 : 30, 
not at 6 : 30." . . . There are fourteen annual 
holidays here, observed by the whites as religiously as 
we observe Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth 
of July, but the natives do not seem to participate in 
them. If there is anything in having an abundant 
supply of cheap labor. South Africa should flourish. 
. . . Over in Missouri, many of the farmers have 
private graveyards. I find a similar custom among the 
Boer farmers in South Africa. ... A big sign I 
saw at Bloemfontein contained this imprint: "D. 
Jones, writer." Meaning that D. Jones was the sign- 
writer who made it. Near the Hotel Cecil in Bloem- 
fontein I also saw this sign : "Hotel Cecil Toilet Club." 
You might guess a week without guessing what the 
sign meant : the place was the hotel barber shop. 
. . . At hotels, I always hate to seethe sign, "Fire 
Escape ; " somehow it disturbs me. But the proprietor 
of the Langham thought up something more delicate ; 
instead of the words "Fire Escape," he uses "Emer- 
gency Exit." ... I am always meeting queer 
people ; I met a woman lately who said she would as 
soon drink a cup of castor oil as a cup of rich cream, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 307 

Sunday, March 23. — Johannesburg and Kimberley 
have experienced the usual high life incident to all boom 
camps. While great fortunes have been made, much 
money has been lost, and suicide is almost as common 
here as in Monte Carlo. Barney Barnato, one of the 
conspicuous figures in both camps, committed suicide 
at sea, by jumping overboard while en route to Eng- 
land. But his act was not due to lack of money, as he 
was rich at the time, and was just completing the finest 
residence in South Africa. The building is now used 
as a school ; it was a gift for school purposes from the 
Barnato estate. . . . Barney Barnato came to 
South Africa as a circus clown ; his real name was 
Barnett Isaacs, and he was a Hebrew. "Barney Bar- 
nato" was his circus name, and it stuck to him in the 
days of his prosperity, when he became a diamond 
broker, and married a "Cape woman;" that is, a ne- 
gress. She was of light color, but so dark that she was 
never received socially. Kimberley and Johannes- 
burg can forgive much in a woman, if she has money, 
but Mrs. Barnato was never forgiven. It is said here 
that she lived with Barnato before she was married 
to him, and he sent her to London to dispose of dia- 
monds acquired illegally. Instead of depositing the 
money in a London bank in Barnato's name, she de- 
posited it in her own name, and Barnato was compelled 
to marry her to get his own money. . . . Barnato 
prospered greatly, and when Cecil Rhodes and Alfred 
Beit organized the great De Beers Consolidated Com- 
pany, they were compelled to treat with him, as he 
owned many of the best claims. He was made a life 
director in the De Beers Company, and the evidence 



308 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is that he was popular, and a good fellow. All the 
big interests here have holdings in Johannesburg as well 
as at Kimberley, so the towns are closely related. . . . 
In the days immediately following the Jameson raid, 
and just preceding the Boer war, Paul Krueger was an 
autocrat, and very unfair with the big English inter- 
ests in Johannesburg, which is in the Transvaal. Krue- 
ger was then president of the Transvaal republic, and 
you hear it stated in whispers to this day that Barney 
Barnato, or some one for him, hired an adventurer 
named Von Veldtheim, a Londoner, to assassinate 
Krueger. In a quarrel Von Veldtheim killed Wolf 
Joel, Barnato's uncle. Von Veldtheim was arrested, 
and while he was in jail, awaiting trial, Barnato com- 
mitted suicide, fearing, it is said, that Von Veldtheim 
would tell the whole story when tried for his life. But 
Von Veldtheim plead self-defense, and was acquitted 
by the Boer courts. He returned to London, and 
again attempted to blackmail members of the De Beers 
Company. The English courts sent him to jail, and 
he is there now. . . . Cecil Rhodes was the best 
man of the lot, and he did much for South Africa, as 
he had ideals greater than making money. Rhodes was 
a bachelor, and, like many men of big schemes, a hard 
drinker. His death was due, I have often heard, to 
heavy drinking. He is buried at Bulawayo, in Rho- 
desia, which he placed on the map, and which is named 
for him. Alfred Beit was a financial man, and not a 
great deal can be said for him except that he was very 
capable, and accumulated an enormous fortune. . . . 
Of the original crowd of boomers. Dr. Jameson is about 
the only one still living, and he is everywhere highly 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 309 

spoken of. He was originally Cecil Rhodes's physician, 
but had business ability, and, with the patronage of 
Rhodes, soon became an important figure in South 
Africa. It was this man who headed the Jameson raid, 
intended to turn the Transvaal republic into an Eng- 
lish colony, but the Boers captured him and his men 
in less time than it would take to write the story. 
Jameson and his chief lieutenants were sentenced to 
death, and Cecil Rhodes, who really inspired the raid, 
got them off. This was accomplished by the payment 
of money to the Boer chiefs, and there was so much 
of it that you hear of Paul Krueger's buried treasure 
almost as frequently as you hear of Captain Kidd's. 
The row over the Jameson raid finally resulted in the 
Boer war, and the flight of President Krueger to Swit- 
zerland, where he died. There is still a good deal of 
friction between the English and Boers : an English 
paper issued this morning complains that at an agri- 
cultural fair to be opened in Johannesburg this week, 
only fifteen per cent of the exhibitors are Boers. . . . 
The week beginning with Easter is a holiday week, and 
the crowd in Johannesburg is so large now that tents 
have been erected in many places to accommodate the 
visitors. The streets this afternoon were packed, and 
certainly nineteen out of twenty were men. This is a 
man's country. . . . The American consul told me 
today that he does not hear much of missionaries in this 
section, except of a few Mormons, who are unpopular 
because of the notion, probably mistaken, that they 
teach polygamy. We called at the consul's office to- 
day, and were much pleased with the many pictures 
we saw there of American saints : Washington, Lin- 



SlO trav£:l letters from 

coin, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, etc. . . . 
In going down in the elevator at the Langham hotel 
today, I saw a cheap book the elevator boy had been 
reading. Picking it up, I saw that the title was : 
"Buffalo's Bill's Warning." So it seems American 
literature, which is said to be unknown abroad, is get- 
ting a start. 



Monday, March 24. — This evening we had six 
American guests at dinner at our hotel : Mr. Gun- 
saulus, the American consul at Johannesburg; Mr. 
and Mrs. Atterbury and their son Manfred, and Mr. 
and Mrs. Mark Gary. Mr. Gary had been at Gape- 
town and Durban during our stay in Johannesburg, 
but returned late this afternoon, and drove direct from 
the train to the hotel. The hotel orchestra, as a com- 
pliment to our party, played American rag time. At 
9 : 30 p. M. the entire party walked with us to the rail- 
way station, where we were to take a train for Bula- 
wayo, en route to Victoria Falls. Our baggage had 
been sent to the station in advance, and we carried 
nothing except an enormous package of American news- 
papers : copies of the Ghicago Tribune and New York 
World. . . . The train did not get away until 
10 : 25 p. M., being late, but our friends remained until 
we departed. I tried to coax them to go home, but they 
wouldn't do it; when people are very nice to me it 
makes me as uncomfortable as when they are not nice 
enough. . . . When we arrived at the station we 
found a chart displayed against a wall showing that 
"Mr. and Miss Howe" had been assigned to a com- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 311 

partment large enough for four, and from the interest 
Mr. Gunsaulus and JNIr. Atterbury took in the matter, 
I imagined they had a good deal to do with securing 
this very agreeable and unusual concession. ... I 
should like to have the pleasure of entertaining Mrs. 
Atterbury, particularly, when she makes her long-de- 
layed visit home. She has been away nineteen years, 
and if ever there was a true patriot, she is one; her 
enjoyment at being among Americans again would be 
worth witnessing. She is always talking of "going 
home," and telling of the many nice people she knows 
there, and nothing would please me more than to assist 
in realizing, as far as possible, all her present expecta- 
tions. Isham, her husband, has been promising a long 
time to take her home "next year," but she now de- 
clares that if he doesn't keep his promise by March 1, 
1914, she will go alone. We spent half our time in 
Johannesburg with the Atterburys ; in addition to 
innumerable meals we ate with them, they gave us one 
dinner at which we had four kinds of wine. So if her 
friends in St. Joe will let me know the date of her ar- 
rival, I will be at the station to welcome her. . . . 
Soon after the train conductor looked at our tickets, 
he proceeded to lug two huge bags of bed-clothing into 
our compartment, and make up two beds. We paid 
$1.20 for the use of the bed-clothing two nights ; the 
charge would have been the same for one night. So 
that we will have a large compartment to ourselves 
two nights and a day, and pay only $1.20 above the 
regular fare. The beds were comfortable, though 
somewhat narrow, but we slept as well, I imagine, as 
people usually do on a sleeping-car. On our door and 



312 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

on our window were placards announcing that the com- 
partment was reserved, and we were not disturbed dur- 
ing the journey. The South-African sleeping-cars are 
not at all bad, except that the train conductor has so 
much to do that he cannot keep them as clean as they 
should be. The conductor did not polish my shoes at 
night, but I knew he was very busy, and overlooked his 
neglect. . . . On one or two trains we have been 
on, there was a man who helped the conductor, but 
on at least two crowded trains on which we traveled, the 
conductor has had no help whatever in making up the 
beds ; the most curious thing I have ever noted in rail- 
road travel. There is a guard on the train, who is 
what we call a brakeman, but he does not assist the 
conductor in the chamber-work. When these con- 
ductors are taking the tickets, they are as haughty as 
are American conductors, but when they begin lugging 
^in sheets, pillows and mattresses, they are as humble 
as the most timid traveler could wish. 



Tuesday, March 25. — This is written on the Im- 
perial Mail train, on the line of South-African railway 
extending from Capetown to Victoria Falls and beyond. 
This will eventually become the "Cape to Cairo" rail- 
way, extending from Capetown, on the seacoast in 
South Africa, to Cairo, in Egypt. You may recall that 
Colonel Roosevelt, on his famous hunting trip in Africa, 
went by rail as far as he could, and then tramped 
through the wild country to the end of the line extend- 
ing south from Egypt, and then went to Cairo. Alfred 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 313 

Beit, one of the bonanza kings of Johannesburg and 
Kimberley, left six million dollars to be used in com- 
pleting the gap between the African and Egyptian 
lines. When the "Cape to Cairo" line is finally com- 
pleted, it will become as famous as the line from Mos- 
cow, in Russia, to a port on the Sea of Japan. This 
line was built by the Russians, and the distance from 
Moscow to Japan is now made in comfortable trains 
in ten days. Think of ten da3^s of continuous travel 
in the same coaches, in the same train, and on the same 
railway! Great as is America, it has nothing like it; 
although we are talking of a line from New York to 
Buenos Aires, in South America. Thousands of miles 
of the proposed line are in operation, but there are gaps 
in Central and South America so difficult that it may 
never be completed, while the "Cape to Cairo" line 
may be a reality within the next twenty years. . . . 
Always remember that in South Africa there is no rich, 
black soil such as you see in Illinois, Iowa, eastern Kan- 
sas, and other of our best states. At least, I have not 
seen any. The soil in Africa is usually thin and red, 
and stones abound nearly everywhere. No part of 
Africa has as reliable a rainfall as the best parts of the 
United States. But nevertheless there is a fascination 
about this frontier country to an American ; were I a 
younger man, probably the "spirit of the Veldt" would 
appeal to me more strongly than it does. All sorts 
of problems, including irrigation and dry-farming, are 
being worked out here. I have seen little country in 
Africa that looks any better than Kansas looks two 
hundred miles from the river, and the trouble is lack 
of a dependable rainfall. Along the coast there is so 



314 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

much rain that sugar-cane is grown without irrigation, 
and there is much good country, but today, eight hun- 
dred miles from the coast, we are in a dry, mountainous 
district which reminds one of Arizona. . . . To- 
day we are seeing blanket negroes ; native blacks who 
wear nothing but blankets, still a habit with some of 
our Indians. Between the lonely stations, we see na- 
tive villages which seem as primitive as anything Africa 
can produce ; at the stations, also, we see some negro 
men and women dressed as well as our best negroes at 
home. This morning we saw negro beggars for the 
first time : black children ran beside the train at a 
stopping-place, and, patting their stomachs, indicated 
that they were hungry, as a means of inducing the pas- 
sengers to throw pennies to them. ... At the 
stations, also, we see strong, capable Englishmen. 
These are the men who are engaged in working out the 
South-African problems, and they are undoubtedly 
making progress. . . . The white race can only 
flourish in certain parts of Africa ; in sections four thou- 
sand feet or more above sea-level. Other portions of 
country must be left, for a long time at least, to the 
natives. Just what proportion of Africa is 4,000 feet 
or more above sea-level, I do not know, but I have seen 
the proportion stated as one-fourth in a certain sec- 
tion. . . . Most of the native male children we 
are seeing today are entirely naked, and their parents 
wear nothing but blankets when they come out to see 
the train go by ; no doubt they wear less when not under 
observation. . . . Tomorrow morning we will leave 
the train at Bulawayo, for a two-days stay. This 
town is in Rhodesia, which is as big as half of Europe. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 315 

All of this immense territory belongs to and is admin- 
istered by a British company, and is not a member of 
the South-African union. In Rhodesia there are 25,- 
000 Europeans and a million natives. The head of 
every native family is compelled to pay the British 
company an annual tax of $5, with $2 extra for each ad- 
ditional wife. Many of the native men who work in the 
mines in Johannesburg and Kimberley came from the 
poor villages we are seeing today. The villages are all 
alike : the houses are straw-covered huts, and the in- 
habitants seem to be as poor as people can be. The 
native men only work as a means of buying wives. 
. . . When Abel and Sampson return home, they 
probably return to wretched villages such as we are 
seeing today. Abel and Sampson are the servants at 
the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Gary, in Johannes- 
burg. Abel has a sweetheart, and is saving money 
to buy her of her father. She is probably a fourteen 
or fifteen-year-old girl living in a village such as we 
are seeing today. . . . Since leaving Sydney, Aus- 
tralia, six weeks ago, we haven't seen an American trav- 
eler. They seem to be very scarce in this part of the 
world. At one of the diamond mines we visited in 
Kimberley, there was a book in which all visitors reg- 
istered. We looked through twenty or more pages 
without finding a visitor registered from the United 
States. ... I have seen only two bunches of 
ostriches on the trip ; the second this morning near 
Mafeking. This town was conspicuous during the 
Boer war, because of the operations of General Baden- 
Powell. It is a pretty and important place, and has 
railroad shops, as the Johannesburg branch joins the 



316 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

main line there. It has 1,400 people, but near it is a 
native town with three times as many. ... In 
some places along the line, the soil is so thin that the 
railroad dump is made of stones ; there is not enough 
dirt for the purpose. The telegraph poles and ties 
are of iron, which indicates the lack of timber. The 
track is excellent, and the train runs rapidly. We have 
become so accustomed to the narrow gauge that we 
do not notice the difference. . . . The dining-car 
on this train is clean, and the meals very good. When 
we went in for the first meal, we were told to pay at 
the end of the journey; so tomorrow morning I will 
pay for three meals. Which is another unusual inci- 
dent of railroad travel. We notice here that hotel and 
train employees always know our names. When we 
went into the dining-car for lunch to day, the waiter 
asked if we were Mr. and Miss Howe. Being informed 
xthat we were, the man escorted us to a table that had 
been reserved. We are charged seventy-two cents for 
lunch and diimer, and sixty cents for breakfast. . . . 
In Johannesburg and Kimberley, we frequently saw 
the native miners going to the station to take trains for 
their homes. Here at nearly every station we see na- 
tive miners who have completed their visit home, and 
are going back to work. ... In one little valley 
we passed through were a good many fields of kaffir 
corn, and in every case the workers were women and 
children. Possibly the men were away working in the 
mines. . . . The country in which we are travel- 
ing this afternoon is eleven hundred miles from Cape- 
town, and the track is not fenced. The occasional 
bunches of goats and cattle — I see no sheep — seem to 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 317 

love the railroad track, and the engineer is compelled 
to slow up, and drive them off with his whistle. . . . 
This evening we are about as far in the interior of Africa 
from Capetown as the Mississippi river is from New 
York, and are beginning to have trouble with dust. I 
believe I have never been bothered with dust as I am 
here ; but we cannot see it — it seems to be a part of the 
air. . . . We passed within thirty miles of Serome, 
containing thirty thousand people, and one of the larg- 
est native towns in South Africa. The chief of this 
tribe does not allow liquor to be sold in his territory, 
and is quite progressive. He rules over a territory a 
hundred miles square. In his town of Serome there are 
a good many white storekeepers and traders, who buy 
corn, skins, etc., and ship them to the railroad by ox 
teams. Serome is in a vast territory kno\^^l as the 
"Protectorate;" the British government protects the 
natives in their right to rule through chiefs. British 
officials, usually army officers, are scattered throughout 
the territor}^ to advise and really rule the chiefs. The 
natives have their own petty courts, but the superior 
courts are British. We are well out of the Boer terri- 
tory now. The Boers once planned to annex the vast 
territory now known as Rhodesia, which fact caused 
Cecil Rhodes to hurry into the country with an armed 
force, and claim it for the British. . . . The tracks 
of the South-African railway are uniformly good, and 
as night approached, the weather became cooler. The 
dust we experienced earlier in the day came from a 
desert where discomfort is always experienced. . . . 
At one place, we saw a negro hoeing corn in a field, stark 
naked. Whether the negro was man or woman, I 



318 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

could not tell at the distance, but as women do most 
of the field work here, I fear it was a woman, and that 
I saw a very improper sight while innocently endeavor- 
ing to broaden my mind by travel. . . . Railroad 
grading is done here with pick and shovel, and not with 
horse or steam scrapers. At one station a long siding 
was being put in, and the necessary cut was being made 
by negroes who used only picks and shovels. . . . 
The passengers on this train, which is a Limited, are 
a nice lot, and very polite. Although all men are sup- 
posed to be equal, the difference between the passen- 
gers on a Limited train and the passengers on an excur- 
sion train is very marked. The difference between 
the patrons of a first- and second-class hotel may also 
be noted without difficulty. 



Wednesday, March 26. — The distance from Mafe- 
king to Bulawayo is 485 miles, and our train made it in 
twenty-four hours. If there is a town between Mafe- 
king and Bulawayo, we passed through it during the 
night ; we stopped at a good many lonely stations, but 
saw no towns. And we passed but one train on the 
way : a passenger train coming from Victoria Falls. 
. . . We arrived at Bulawayo this morning at 9 : 30, 
on time to the second, although we left Johannesburg 
and Mafeking late. We were taken to the Grand 
Hotel in an automobile, of which the hotel porter was 
the driver, and the manager met us with the question : 
"Mr. and Miss Howe?" You travel by schedule here, 
and your coming is known in advance. . . . Last 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 319 

night the weather was chilly, although the afternoon 
was almost insufferably hot and dusty. All day yes- 
terday we traveled through a country covered with 
scrubby trees ; trees so bent and twisted that they 
looked as though they had rheumatism in every limb 
and joint. This morning we awoke in Rhodesia, and 
the country improved in character, though the land 
was still of the Arizona kind rather than of the Iowa or 
eastern Kansas kind. In Rhodesia we saw larger corn- 
fields than we saw yesterday, but the fields were many 
miles apart. Corn is the staple crop all over Africa, 
but the corn I have seen was small. . . . Africa is 
an enormous country ; when it comes to size, we must 
take off our hats to it. But nine hundred miles in the 
interior, you do not find a city like Chicago ; the fourth 
or fifth city in the world, and built up from agriculture. 
Africa was known before Columbus discovered Amer- 
ica ; had it been as rich agriculturally as North Amer- 
ica, the negroes would have been chased out by farmers 
as promptly as the Indians were chased out of North 
America. In Africa today there are negro tribes as 
wild as were the wildest tribes hundreds of years ago. 
There is here a tribe known as the Bushmen. Their 
language is a collection of clicks and grunts, these 
last, absent in the other African dialects, being said to 
bear a resemblance to the different cries of the baboon. 
The Bushman is so much like the baboon that he has no 
conception of right or wrong ; it is as impossible to 
civilize him as it is impossible to civilize the monkey. 
He is the missing link between the monkey most like 
man, and the human animal. He can no more under- 
stand the rights of property than can the lion or the 



320 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

jackal ; theft is not a crime with him, because he can- 
not appreciate that theft is wrong. So it has been 
found necessary to drive him to the wildest and most 
inaccessible sections of the country, and, when he ap- 
pears in civilization, is hunted as ruthlessly as are cun- 
ning and dangerous wild animals. No Bushman has 
ever been know to cultivate a field; he lives entirely 
by hunting animals, wild berries, roots, etc., and no 
white man has ever been able to understand the Bush- 
man's language. . . . Africa is behind us in civili- 
zation because its land is poorer. In many of our best 
states it was possible in early times, before fences were 
introduced, to plow a furrow hundreds of miles long, 
and every foot of the land represented a rich, deep, 
black soil that would produce marvelous crops without 
irrigation or fertilizing. There is no such land in Af- 
rica; the abundance of such land in North America 
explains why it has a hundred million progressive peo- 
ple, and is everywhere known as the best country the 
sun shines on. Possibly modesty should cause us to 
boast less, but the big talk we use in Fourth of July 
addresses is not far from the truth. . . . Do Amer- 
icans boast a good deal? On the contrary, I sometimes 
fear they habitually deny nearly every good thing that 
may be said about their country. In Johannesburg I 
was given a big bundle of American newspapers and 
magazines, and read them in coming here. I saw no 
boasting ; on the contrary, I read dozens of sensational 
scandals that were in the main baseless. One worthy 
and useful old gentleman, I read, is being harassed by 
an impudent investigating committee, although so ill 
that he cannot speak above a whisper. I read that a 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 321 

prominent American manufacturer, who certainly de- 
serves well of his country, has been sentenced to jail 
and fined $50,000, on a charge that seems trifling. I 
read of a case wherein a negro assaulted a worthy white 
woman in the South. The papers are determined to 
make out that the woman was assaulted and cut with 
a knife by her husband, who caught her flirting with 
another man. The woman and her husband, and all 
their friends who were about them at the time, swear in 
court that the assault was committed by a mulatto, 
whom none of them knew ; there is no sworn evidence 
whatever to the contrary. It was rumored for months 
before the trial began that a newspaper reporter was 
smuggled into the office of the prosecuting attorney 
when the husband and wife were examined, soon after 
the assault, and that the reporter heard the husband 
say incriminating things to his wife, during the tempo- 
rary absence of the prosecuting attorney ; but at the 
trial, the reporter was a witness, and swore to no such 
incident. At this distance, it looks as though the gos- 
sips have the assistance of the courts and the news- 
papers in making good their vicious and untruthful 
tales. ... Is this boasting? Is it not, on the 
contrary, making ourselves mean when we are usually 
creditable and decent? ... To a hurried visitor, 
Bulawayo seems even handsomer, and duller, than 
Bloemfontein, the old Dutch town in the Orange Free 
State which I admired so much. The Grand Hotel 
here is excellent, and the town clean and handsome, 
but I see little business going on. It may be that the 
farmers come in some other day in the week, but I 
wonder at and enjoy the quietness in Bulawayo. So 



322 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

far I have seen no great number of pretty women, who 
always distinguish a dull town, but possibly they have 
been kept in by a rain which began falling soon after 
my arrival. Work is in progress here on a government 
building which would do credit to a state capital in 
America, but this not the capital of Rhodesia; that 
honor belongs to Salisbury, three hundred miles away. 
The new building will be occupied by officials of the 
British company which owns Rhodesia, and the post- 
office. . . . When the Union Pacific Railway was 
built, in the days immediately following the Civil War, 
the government gave the company a strip of land on 
both sides of the track, as a reward for developing the 
country. In like manner, the English government 
gave Rhodesia to certain capitalists, except that in this 
case the capitalists govern the country ; they collect 
taxes, try criminals, hang them when necessary, collect 
customs, and otherwise administer public affairs. The 
police and militia of Rhodesia serve the Rhodesia com- 
pany ; when a man buys public land, he buys it of the 
Rhodesia company; but back of the Rhodesia com- 
pany, John Bull is a silent but powerful figure, and 
nothing can be done without his approval and consent. 
India was governed many years by the East India 
company, but finally Victoria was made Empress of 
India. Rhodesia will eventually become a member of 
the South- African union, certainly ; it may be even 
closer than that to the British crown. . . . Flies 
and mosquitoes terrorize me in Africa. There is a fly 
here which gives the dreaded Sleeping Sickness with its 
bite, and there is a mosquito which gives you typhoid. 
I strike at both insects as promptly as the average man 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 323 

strikes at a moth miller when around home. I never 
knew a man so dignified that he wouldn't take a smash 
at a moth miller. . . . The Bulawayo newspaper, 
issued this morning, tells of the depredations of lions 
in the surrounding country. Several cattle and one 
native were killed. Let American country editors 
think of exciting country correspondence of that kind. 



Thursday, March 27. — Thirty miles from Bulawayo 
is a district known as the Matopo Hills, one hundred 
miles long by twenty-five broad. During the Matabele 
rebellion of 1896-7, these rough hills of granite proved 
impregnable when occupied by the natives, as they are 
full of passes and gigantic caves, and occasional fertile 
but almost inaccessible valleys. Cecil Rhodes loved 
this district, because of its wildness, and one of his last 
requests was that his body be buried on top of the high- 
est of the Matopo Hills. We visited his grave today, 
during the course of an automobile ride. There is no 
monument over his grave; a simple flat stone covers 
it. Two hundred feet away, and on top of the same 
hill, is a monument "In Memory of Brave Men." It 
is a huge affair of granite, in memory of Major Allan 
Wilson and his party, who fell on the Shangaui river 
in 1893. It is a common habit of discreet men to erect 
handsome monuments over the graves of foolhardy ad- 
venturers, and call them brave. Thousands of men 
lost their lives in order that Cecil Rhodes might be- 
come noted, and be the subject of statues at Kimberley, 
Johannesburg, Bulawayo, etc. Other noted men have 



324 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

sacrificed the lives of their followers with equal reck- 
lessness. . . . On the four sides of the notable 
monument near Rhodes's grave are bronze panels show- 
ing scenes from various campaigns in Rhodesia; the 
figures are of heroic size, and executed with so much 
faithfulness by John Tweed that many of the faces 
may be recognized. . . . From Rhodes's grave, 
the Matopo Hills may be seen in all their remarkable 
desolation. The place looks like hell Math the fires out ; 
like the world upside down. Rhodes had a model 
farm of 115,000 acres just outside the Hills, and spent 
$150,000 on an irrigating dam. He expected this dam 
to irrigate 2,000 acres, but it actually irrigates less than 
700. Rhodes spent considerable time on this farm, 
and frequently went to the high hill where his body was 
afterwards buried. In moods of despondency, when 
he knew his illness must soon result in death, he spent 
several moonlight nights on the spot where his grave 
is now located. Several attendants accompanied him, 
but he said little to them ; he silently looked around at 
what is probably the most majestic scene of desolation 
in the world. Rhodes was less than fifty when he died, 
and his thoughts about the vanities of life would have 
been exceedingly interesting in print. He was one of 
the remarkable characters of recent history, and I shall 
long remember him; especially because of a statue 
erected in his memory at the crossing of two principal 
streets in Bulawayo. This statue is a wonderfully 
lifelike reproduction of a man, and I have repeatedly 
looked at it with more interest than I usually look at 
works of art. . . . On the journey to the Matopo 
Hills, we saw frequent bunches of wild baboons; in 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 325 

one lot there must have been twenty or thirty. These 
animals are a nuisance to farmers, as they kill sheep ; 
it is therefore necessary to hunt them with dogs. . . . 
On the way to the Matopo Hills is a hotel. We ate 
lunch there on our return trip, and a bride and groom 
started out ahead of us, in an automobile. We finally 
overtook them, but the bride and groom were utterly 
unconscious of our presence, and hugged and kissed 
most of the way to Bulawayo. A mother and daughter, 
traveling acquaintances, accompanied us, and the 
daughter was particularly interested in the actions of 
the bride and groom. Later, when we punctured a 
tire, and stopped for repairs, the girl confessed that she 
is to be married in a few weeks. She is the daughter 
of a big farmer in the Transvaal, and will marry a young 
banker. A banker is as particular about marrying a 
rich woman as an army officer. Ever know a banker 
or an army officer to marry a poor girl? . . . The 
bride and groom in front of us greatly interested our 
party, and we laughed until our sides ached. They 
were fooling the driver of their automobile, but utterly 
unconscious of five spectators in the rear. In fooling 
one man, you are usually unconscious of several others 
who are watching you. 



Friday, March 28. — The mother and daughter with 
whom we have been traveling several days, Mrs. and 
Miss Meek, live fifteen miles off the railroad between 
Durban and Johannesburg, on a farm of twenty thou- 
sand acres. Mr. Meek, the husband and father, goes 



326 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

in principally for sheep, of which he has many thousand 
head, but he does general farming as well, and has two 
hundred and fifty natives on his farms, counting women 
and children. These live in small villages or kraals on 
the land, and both Mrs. Meek and her daughter speak 
the Kaffir language. Some of the Kaffir men on the 
Meek farm have six wives ; the farm foreman has that 
number, and Mrs. Meek says he is a very reliable and 
capable man, in spite of his love affairs. The foreman 
has twenty-eight children, and each of his six wives lives 
in a different hut. When he takes a new wife, there is 
no marriage ceremony ; he simply invites his friends to 
a wedding feast, which the other wives prepare. He 
buys his wives, usually paying ten head of cattle each ; 
there are no love preliminaries, except that occasionally 
a young girl comes to the foreman's kraal, and remains 
until he takes her as his wife. He is a prosperous man, 
and prosperous men are everywhere popular with the 
girls. The wives of the foreman get along very well 
together ; they have always been accustomed to the 
system of plural wives, and do not seem to object to it. 
The children living in the kraals, Mrs. Meek says, are 
very healthy ; more so than white children living in 
modern houses in the same vicinity. The grass-cov- 
ered huts in which the natives live are less liable to 
leak in rainy weather than the houses of the whites, 
which are almost universally covered in South Africa 
with corrugated iron. Mr. Meek pays his native 
workmen about $2.50 per month, and board, providing 
they are reliable and steady. Their board consists of 
a certain amount of shelled corn ; about all they eat is 
corn-meal porridge, and their idea of luxury is to have 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA, 327 

brown sugar to sprinkle over it. Most of them have 
gardens, and Mr. Meek loans them oxen and plows for 
cultivating them. A young native boy who herds cat- 
tle gets seventy-two cents a month. The native work- 
men employed on the Meek farm have their porridge 
ground and cooked by a native employed for the pur- 
pose, who never gives them too much, because the 
work of grinding corn in a handmill is a considerable 
task, and this task falls to the cook. The natives on 
the farm go to church once on Sunday, but they seem 
to attend the services as a means of seeing and being 
seen rather than because they are religious. A rail- 
road is building toward Mr. Meek's farm, and lately 
he refused $20 an acre for it. I am somewhat confused 
about the yield of corn per acre in South Africa, as 
the people always say a field yields so many bags per 
morgen ; a morgen being a little over two acres, and 
a bag holding a little less than three bushels. But it 
may be safely stated that the yield of corn in no part 
of South Africa is equal to the yield in the corn belt in 
our section. Disastrous drouths are also very common ; 
corn has been almost a failure for the past three seasons. 
I have not seen a good field of corn in South Africa. 
But Mr. Meek is a very prosperous farmer, because of 
his sheep, cattle and horses. He also milks a good 
many cows, and sends the cream to the railroad, "five 
hours" from his farm : distances are always computed 
here by hours, and not by miles. Five miles from his 
farm-house is a country village without a railroad, and 
there he does his "trading." He is making an exhibit 
of stock at the Johannesburg fair, and his wife and 
daughter are very anxious to know whether they took 



328 TKAVEL LETTERS FROM 

any prizes. . . . Mr. Meek was born of English 
parents, but has never been to England. During the 
war he would not fight the English, and he would not 
fight the Boers, as his wife is of Dutch descent. So 
he left home, and went into Natal. His wife remained 
on the farm throughout the war, and was constantly 
surrounded by troops of the contending forces. Once, 
when they had an artillery battle, the shells flew over 
her house for hours ; some of the shells fell in her door- 
yard, and, exploding, tore down fences and outhouses. 
Her children were away at school when the war began, 
and did not come home for eighteen months. Mrs. 
Meek managed to smuggle a good deal of the farm 
live-stock into Natal, where her husband received it 
and cared for it on land rented for the purpose. In 
smuggling sheep and cattle out of the country, Mrs. 
Meek's main reliance was the native foreman, the 
wretch who has six wives ; he was as faithful and ef- 
ficient as it is possible for a servant to be. Occasionally 
the English talked of sending Mrs. Meek to the con- 
centration camp, and burning her house, but she was 
always able to coax them out of the notion. . . . 
She has a native cook, a man, and pays him a dollar 
a week. The native women do her washing and iron- 
ing, and do it very well, for a dollar a week ; in addi- 
tion, they clean and sweep. . . . Mrs. Meek has 
never heard of a divorce among the natives on the farm 
where she lives. The men of some native tribes are 
married in church, by a negro preacher ; in such a case, 
they are compelled to pay two shillings for a license, 
but this civilized plan is so expensive and troublesome 
that it is not popular. Besides, when a man is married 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 329 

in church, and pays two shillings for a license, he is 
liable to arrest if he marries another wife. 



Saturday, March 29. — We are at the far-famed 
Victoria Falls today, and traveled here from Bulawayo 
at the terrific pace of fourteen miles an hour. The 
conductor on the train wore a natty white suit, but did 
not make up the beds, though he sold the bedding 
tickets ; the actual chambermaid was a very black na- 
tive boy. I do not understand why sleeping-car por- 
ters are permitted on some night trains, and not on 
others. ... I was in a sleeping compartment with 
a captain in the English army, who is on his way to a 
station in the interior, seventy miles from Victoria 
Falls. There, in company with another army officer, 
he will rule a district, assisted by a few native police. 
He says hunting is excellent where he is going, and he 
showed me his assortment of guns ; including one spe- 
cially intended for elephants. . . . The country 
between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls (280 miles) looks 
superior to that between Maf eking and Bulawayo, but 
we ran into the inevitable desert, and suffered consider- 
ably from dust. As we approached the falls the coun- 
try became rougher, and an hour before we finally left 
the train we could see a cloud of mist hanging over the 
great cataract. When the train stopped at Victoria 
Falls station — the railroad runs four hundred miles be- 
yond this point — we could hear the roar which will be 
in our ears constantly until we leave next Wednesday at 
1p.m. . . . There is no town at the Falls ; only a 



3S0 Travel letters from 

hotel, a rambling, comfortable affair which can accom- 
modate two hundred people. The charge is $5.25 per 
day each. Five miles away is the town of Livingstone, 
capital of Northwest Rhodesia, but it has only a hand- 
ful of inhabitants. From my room at the hotel I can 
see the famous railroad bridge which spans the Zambesi 
river just below the falls, and passing my window are 
V wet and bedraggled people who have been through the 
Rain Forest. In order to see the falls to best advan- 
tage, it is necessary to go through the Rain Forest and 
get a ducking. Many of those who arrived on our 
train at 7 o'clock this morning will return at 1 o'clock 
this afternoon, thus avoiding a delay here of four days ; 
after the train leaves this afternoon, there will not be 
another train until next Wednesday. ... I doubt 
if anyone has ever seen, or ever will see, all of Victoria 
■Falls. It may only be seen in pieces, and the spray 
will always hide much of the great spectacle from the 
most industrious visitor ; whereas Niagara may be 
seen in a single glance, in all its majesty. Victoria 
Falls is a mile long; about twice as long as Niagara, 
and four hundred feet high, whereas Niagara makes a 
leap of only 162 feet. . . . Every time I looked at 
Victoria Falls, there was usually an Englishman present 
to inquire: "Well, what about it?" Meaning, "How 
does it compare with your Niagara?" The two falls 
are not alike, and cannot be compared ; both are won- 
derful in a different way. Niagara is situated within a 
few miles of Buffalo, New York, one of the largest and 
busiest cities of the United States, and surrounded by 
a fertile and well-settled country. Niagara is in the 
center of parks, hotels, mills, street railways, and civil- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 331 

ization of many other varieties ; an American bride 
who is not taken to Niagara on her wedding trip, may 
get a divorce on that ground, if the fact is presented to 
a court of proper jurisdiction, but Victoria is in a wild 
country in the mountains of Africa, seventeen hundred 
miles from Capetown, and Capetown is nineteen days 
from London, and twenty-nine from New York. Ni- 
agara makes a straight leap, whereas Victoria is more 
of a cataract. At Niagara, a great solid wall of sea- 
green water pours over a precipice ; here, the force of 
the fall is broken in many places by huge rocks — at 
one place the fall is separated by a wooded island, and 
there are many other smaller breaks. At Niagara, the 
river above the fall is clean and swift, with no rocks. 
At Victoria, the river above the fall is broken into a 
thousand different islands ; it looks like a shallow river 
overflowing in brush and timber land after a torrent of 
rain, and much of the water pouring over the falls is 
yellow and dirty. . . . Victoria Falls is in shape 
like a huge capital T ; the falls represented by the top 
of the letter, and the outlet by the stem. The water 
pours into a great pool a mile long, and escapes by a 
narrow outlet not more than 150 feet wide in places. 
The water pours into the pool with a roar that may be 
heard twenty-eight miles, and stirs up a spray that 
causes constant rain to fall in its immediate territory. 
This spray is so great that it looks like a cloud against 
the sky, and may be seen before you hear the roar of 
the falls. . . . Yet the water from this great pool 
escapes almost as quietly as water from an undis- 
turbed lake. After the water escapes from the great 
pool below the falls, through the stem of the letter T, 



332 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

it makes a turn at right angles, and sweeps around like 
the capital letter U ; yet there is no great disturbance 
in any part of the outlet from the falls. At Niagara, 
the whirlpool rapids is one of the world's wonders ; at 
Victoria, the river a few hundred feet below the falls 
seems to be navigable — it does not look unlike the 
Waunganui river in New Zealand, down which we 
traveled in boats. I believe one of the Waunganui 
river boats could come up the gorge below Victoria 
Falls. . . . Every visitor, after looking at the wall 
of water pouring over the falls, asks the same question : 
''What becomes of the water?" Dr. Livingstone, who 
discovered the falls, asked the question. I was with 
a party of four when I first saw the falls, and all agreed 
that, in places, the river a few hundred feet below was 
not more than fifty feet wide, although the guidebooks 
say the width is greater. And this narrow river is not 
greatly disturbed a few yards below the great Victoria 
Falls; there is no swirling, leaping rapids, as may be 
seen four or five miles below Niagara. When looking 
at Victoria Falls, very much more water seems to pour 
over the brink than at Niagara ; when looking at the 
river below, you are disposed to think the quantity is 
much less — as a matter of fact, the quantity is about 
the same, with Niagara a little in the lead. ... At 
Niagara, you may see the falls from an electric car, 
and go down the Niagara river on top of the hills, and 
return beside the whirlpool rapids ; but seeing Victoria 
is much more difficult. For nearly a mile you walk in 
what seems a pouring rain, but which is actually spray 
from the falls. Most visitors put on old clothes at 
the hotel, and quietly submit to the ducking ; on their 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 333 

return, they take a hot bath, put on dry clothing, and 
sit on the verandas, and talk about the wonderful trip. 
During this walk of half a mile in pouring rain from 
the spray of the falls, you pass through what is called 
the Rain Forest. As rain is always falling, the vege- 
tation is luxuriant, but not as luxuriant as I had ex- 
pected. The path through the rain forest is always 
wet; sometimes you step into water over your shoe- 
tops, and the trees are always dripping; you cannot 
see the falls to the best advantage wdthout passing 
through this Rain Forest, and you cannot make this trip 
without becoming as wet as though you had plunged 
into a lake with your clothes on. During this trip 
you frequently stand not a hundred feet from the falls, 
and the spray coming up from the pool is so thick that 
you cannot see a hundred feet beyond you. And all 
the time the great roar is in your ears, and the rain 
shifting with the wind. The sun nearly always shines 
here, and on this trip along the edge of the falls you 
may see a thousand rainbows ; I am sure I saw that 
many today. . . . The Rain Forest is not down in 
the canyon, as one might imagine ; it is on a level with 
the top of the falls, and sometimes not a hundred feet 
away from it. Imagine a street one mile long, and 
400 feet below sidewalks on either side. One sidewalk 
represents the Rain Forest. Opposite you is Victoria 
Falls pouring into the chasm below, and causing a 
spray which shifts with the wind, and not only drenches 
you, but hides much of your view. The Rain Forest 
is simply the other side of the falls, and, to travel its 
entire length, you must make a detour, and cross the 
narrow outlet of the falls chasm by means of the rail 



334 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

road bridge. . . . The bridge below the falls is 
the highest in the world, and in walking across it you 
are 420 feet above the water in the gorge below. When 
it was being built, in 1903-5, it was frequently de- 
scribed in the magazines as one of the great wonders 
of engineering. The bridge is of one span only, of the 
cantilever type, and 610 feet in length. From the 
bridge, the hotel, a half-mile away, and near the edge 
of the canyon, is in plain view. The bridge-tender is a 
negro boy, and visitors pay him a shilling each to cross 
and return. , . . The present is known as the wet 
season, and, the Zambesi river being at a high stage, 
the falls is rather more gorgeous now than it will be 
later on, when the river is lower. The Zambesi is one 
of the great rivers of Africa, and is referred to in a big 
way as we refer to the Mississippi or Missouri ; citizens 
here frequently refer to "the vast territory south of 
the Zambesi," as the Mississippi and Missouri rivers 
are dividing-lines in the United States. . . . The 
falls were discovered by Dr. David Livingstone in 1854, 
and named in honor of Queen Victoria. Livingstone 
died in Africa, of the fever. He had faithful friends 
among his native followers, and when they found him 
dead, they embalmed his body as best they could, and 
carried it fifteen hundred miles to the sea, whence it 
was taken to England, and buried in Westminster Ab- 
bey. . . . The hills around Victoria Falls are cov- 
ered with a growth of inferior timber, and this continues 
until the end of the railway is reached, 400 miles to 
the north. . . . It is estimated that nearly a mill- 
ion and a quarter of visitors see Niagara every year ; 
barely two thousand see Victoria Falls annually, owing 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 335 

to its location far in the interior of Africa. In order 
to reach the falls from the sea at Durban, we were com- 
pelled to travel five days and nights by railroad train. 
. . . It is said the fall is 420 feet. It does not seem 
so great, because the lower part is hidden in the spray 
arising from the chasm into which the water drops. 
But while you cannot appreciate the unusual fall, you 
can easily appreciate that the fall is a mile wide, al- 
though broken all along the edge by islands and huge 
rocks. In thinking of Victoria Falls don't imagine it a 
solid sheet of water a mile long, falling 420 feet. The 
falls are broken into a thousand different streams, and 
some of them strike rocks in the wall and break into 
spray. ... I was not greatly moved when I first 
saw the falls, but felt that the sight was worth coming a 
long distance to see. Pictures of the falls are deceiv- 
ing, as are pictures of everything. In taking pictures 
of Victoria Falls, photographers look for the fine views ; 
the commoner aspects of the cataract are rarely pho- 
tographed. I recall a noted photograph of the falls 
which is one of the most majestic things I have ever 
seen in pictures ; but in order to take it, the photog- 
rapher was compelled to climb dowTi a cliff by means 
of ropes ; so the picture is really unnatural. . . . 
There are thirty or forty guests at this hotel, and I 
have talked with most of them. They all seem to be 
well satisfied with the trip, but none of them rave about 
the falls as do the writers in the guidebooks. . . . 
No one seems to know the depth of water in the narrow 
gorge through which the water from the falls is dis- 
charged ; soundings of 150 feet have been made with- 
out touching bottom. 



336 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Sunday, March 30. — Today we again walked to the 
Falls from the hotel, a distance of half a mile. Cap- 
tain Mosley, of the British army, who shared a sleep- 
ing apartment with me on the train coming here, ac- 
companied us. The captain is changing his station, 
and has with him four hunting dogs and a black boy 
who has been his cook seven years. This black boy 
accompanied us on the walk, to exercise the dogs, and 
on the way, the dogs in ranging about, encountered a 
bunch of baboons. The captain and black boy ran 
into the woods, toward the big noise the fight stirred 
up, and I followed them, arriving just in time to see 
the dogs whipped, and the baboons scamper up the 
trees. The captain says the dogs would have been 
killed had they found full-grown male baboons, in- 
stead of small-sized females and young ones. Baboons 
are a great nuisance all over this section. They have 
almost human intelligence, and are very adroit thieves. 
I have been told that baboons will attack a woman, if 
they find her alone, but that they have great respect 
for men, whom they associate with a gun. Near the 
hotel is a camp of soldiers, and they have a tame 
baboon. They also have a tame deer of a variety not 
much larger than a jack rabbit. The soldiers pick up 
the deer, and stand it on a table. There are dozens 
of different kinds of buck here, ranging from the size 
of a rabbit to the size of an ox. The soldiers told me 
that plenty of reed buck may be found within four 
miles of the Falls, but this is the closed season, and one 
of the duties of the soldiers is to protect the game. 
Last night one of the soldiers saw a leopard prowling 
around the camp. A few days ago a lion was killed 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 337 

within a few miles of the falls ; the man who killed it 
brought in the skull and hide, and received a bounty 
of $7.50. Lions destroy a great deal of game, and the 
government pays for their destruction. The soldiers 
patrol a district 100 miles square, and say they rarely 
hear of lions attacking a man ; they hear lions nearly 
every night, but rarely see them, as the animals are as 
sly as our foxes. The corporal \vith whom I talked 
says that during an experience of seven years in this 
section, he never personally knew a lion to attack man. 
He has heard of such cases, but you all know how com- 
mon it is to hear stories that are not true. . . . The 
British captain with whom I spend a good deal of time, 
walking about, or sitting on the hotel veranda, is one 
of the quietest men I have ever known. He has always 
lived among soldiers, having been born in Benares, 
India, where his father was an officer in the English 
army. He lived there until he was twelve years old. 
Benares is as old as Babylon; when old Babylon was 
a flourishing city, Benares was in existence, and has 
remained a city continuously ever since, while Babylon 
has been completely destroyed, and its location almost 
forgotten. The captain tells of his experiences, when 
I question him, but is very reticent in speaking of the 
numerous forays in which he has engaged. I have no 
doubt he has had many thrilling experiences as a big- 
game hunter, but I cannot induce him to say much 
about them. . . . Another Englishman, named 
Green, who is wath us a good deal, talks enough for 
half a dozen. He is a business man at Sheffield, Eng- 
land, and says that in case of war between England and 
Germany, the United States should assist England. 



338 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Indeed, Mr. Green thinks the United States should 
even now present England with a battleship, and assist 
in "bluffing" Germany, as New Zealand has done. 
One of the ladies present asked me : 

"What are England and Germany quarreling 
about?" 

"They have no quarrel," I replied. "They are 
simply bullies strutting around and daring each other 
to fight. I have forgotten the exact number, but we 
will say for illustration that England had a hundred 
battleships, and Germany fifty. Germany ordered 
two additional battleships built, and England imme- 
diately ordered four new dreadnaughts. And this 
ridiculous proceeding has been kept up for years; 
England is pledged to build two warships for every 
one built by Germany. The two countries have noth- 
ing to quarrel about, but the English declare they 
must have twice as many battleships as Germany, and 
the Germans say they must have as many battleships 
as England. And an apparently intelligent English- 
man named Green says that in case this foolish con- 
test finally results in war between the two countries, 
the United States should quit agriculture, and mining, 
and manufacturing, and trade, and assist England, 
simply because the Americans and English read the 
same language, although they understand each other 
with difiiculty when they talk." 

The Victoria Falls Hotel is owned by the railroad 
company, and when you visit the falls you will have no 
fault to find with it. Two hundred guests could be 
easily entertained, but I doubt if there are two dozen 
here now, as this is the dull season. Fall begins in 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 339 

this section with April, and visitors are most numer- 
ous during the cool weather. The most terrible cold- 
weather story I have heard here is that ice sometimes 
forms at night during the terrific cold prevailing in 
July and August. . . . The present temporary 
buildings of the Victoria Falls Hotel are to be replaced 
shortly with permanent buildings to cost $150,000. 
But in the present temporary buildings, guests willing 
to pay the price may have rooms with private bath, 
and during the worst weather the nights are cool. 
My bed is covered with a mosquito netting, as is the 
universal rule here, instead of putting netting at the 
windows and doors, but I have heard no mosquitos. 
. . . The Mr. Green referred to above has been look- 
ing at land in Africa with a view of buying for friends 
in England. English people have a great deal of cold, 
damp, foggy weather, and they hear much of the glori- 
ous sunshine of Africa ; so Mr. Green's report as to the 
possibilities of farming here will influence a good many. 
His report will not be very favorable. He has spent 
weeks in the different farming districts, and says he 
found farmers suffering from a three-years drouth. One 
man had a splendid prospect for corn, and thought the 
harvest would make him rich. Suddenly the hot winds 
came on, and in a few days the crop was ruined. This 
man offered his farm of 7,000 acres for sale at a dollar 
an acre ; Mr. Green says he can buy millions of acres 
at that price, but will not advise his friends to take it, 
as the rainfall is uncertain, and the country infested 
with ants, ticks, flies dangerous to stock, etc. Possi- 
bly these pests will disappear in time ; certain districts 
formerly dangerous are now free from the cattle-fly. 



340 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

. . . Mr. Green says that in many of the best sec- 
tions of England, agricultural land can be bought at 
$50 an acre ; the choicest at from $100 to $150 per acre. 
This statement particularly interested me because that 
is about the range at which land sells in the district 
where I live. I had always imagined that land in Eng- 
land sold at much higher prices than in Atchison 
county, Kansas, fifteen hundred miles west of the sea 
at New York. . . . Mr. Green says that last 
January, in his section of England, there were only 
five days without rain ; last summer, he saw only four- 
teen bright days. There is plenty of sunshine and 
plenty of dry weather in Africa, but Mr. Green says 
he will not recommend the country to his neighbors. 



Monday, March 31. — This morning a dozen guests 
from the hotel, including the two travelers from Kan- 
sas, took a boat trip of fifteen or twenty miles on the 
Zambesi river above the falls. After a walk of half an 
hour we embarked in a large gasoline launch, and as- 
cended the river until about noon, when we went ashore 
on an island, and explored it until lunch was ready at 
12 : 30. A Hindu servant, with a native helper, ac- 
companied us from the hotel, carrying two large ham- 
pers, and they prepared tea, and served an excellent 
lunch. . . . The Zambesi river above the falls is 
a wide, rambling affair, full of islands, and so shallow 
that the course of our launch was marked for several 
miles. When we finally landed, it was because we 
could go no further on account of a rapids. The river 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 341 

contains more water than the Missouri or Mississippi 
river, I should say, but is not navigable. At places 
it is said to be a mile and three-quarters wide. A river 
in this dry country is a novelty, and people make long 
excursions to see the Zambesi. On either side there 
is a line of hills which do not look unlike the hills bor- 
dering the Missouri river, but the valley is covered 
with trees and brush, as was the case in the Missouri 
"bottom" fifty years ago. On the Zambesi, the river 
valley seems to shift from one side to the other, instead 
of being confined always to the east side, as is the case 
with the Missouri river in its entire course. The trees 
along the Zambesi are of a stunted variety ; along the 
African railways, a fairly large tree attracts almost as 
much attention as a river. The African trees are not 
large and graceful, as are our maples, oaks, walnuts, 
etc. One of the wonders here is a cream-of -tartar 
tree which measures ninety-eight feet in circumfer- 
ence. It is actually a dozen stunted trees growing in 
a bunch, but it is regarded as a wonder, and every 
visitor carves his initials in the bark. . . . Hippo- 
potami are quite dangerous above the falls, as they 
upset boats in a spirit of mischief. They are being 
shot, and two were killed the day before we went up 
the river. Some time ago four tourists rowed on the 
river, in small boats. Hippos upset both boats, and . 
two of the tourists went over the falls ; the other two 
drifted against islands, and were rescued. It was a 
man and a woman who were rescued, strangers to each 
other, but the tragedy made them friends, and a few 
days ago they were married. . . . There are also 
crocodiles in the river, and they are also a nuisance. 



342 I-EAVIEL LETTERS FROM 

The man who ran the launch hves on the hotel farm, 
and says that since August last, crocodiles have cap- 
tured twenty of the farm cattle. The cattle go to the 
river to drink, or to stand in the water during the heat 
of the day, and the crocodiles, some of which are eigh- 
teen feet long, drag them in. One of the soldiers from 
the camp near the hotel shot a crocodile while we were 
on the river. ... I heard a curious discussion 
while we were eating luncheon on the island. An Eng- 
lishman, a church member, had great respect for mis- 
sionaries. All the others were residents of Africa, and 
their testimony was against them. One man said the 
superintendent of a penitentiary told him recently that 
ninety per cent of the convicts had been "converted" 
by missionaries. A mining man testified that negroes 
who had been under the influence of missionaries were 
tiearly always less honest and less useful than natives 
who had had no such experience. A woman who lived 
on a South-African farm of 20,000 acres gave similar 
testimony, as did an army man who had served in 
Africa since the Boer war. Wherever I have gone, I 
have heard the missionary experiment denounced by 
white residents. I am taking no part in the contro- 
versy, but record as a remarkable fact that in Africa, 
China, Japan, India, etc., the testimony of white resi- 
dents is nearly always against the missionary experi- 
ment. Every traveler remarks this, and comments 
on it. . . . This morning at 3 o'clock a rifle-shot 
rang out back of the hotel ; one of the soldiers in the 
camp saw a leopard prowling around, and shot at it. 
A photographer living near the hotel has a cow, a calf 
and a donkey, and every night these are carefully 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 343 

locked up in pole fences that are leopard-proof. . . . 
This morning, when I awoke, I found a gentle rain fall- 
ing in front of my room at the hotel. It turned out 
to be mist from the falls. This mist shifts with the 
wind, and in whatever direction we walk we run into 
it occasionally. At points quite distant from the falls 
it amounts to only a mist, or a very gentle rain, but 
at other places there is a heavy downpour. Along 
certain walls of the canyon below the cataract, dozens 
of waterfalls may be seen, and these are fed by the 
mists rising from the falls. There is seldom an hour 
during the day that a rainbow may not be seen from 
the hotel veranda. During moonlight nights a lunar 
rainbow may be seen which, experts say, shows one 
color not seen in the rainbow in daylight. ... I 
was looking over the hotel register today, and ran 
across this entry: "Mrs. Annie E. McConnell, U. S. 
A." I made some remark about finding a visitor from 
home, and the clerk said, laughingly : 

"That woman became lost, and fourteen of us spent 
half of one night hunting her." 

The paths around the hotel and falls are very well 
defined, but travelers may easily become confused after 
nightfall. 



Tuesday, April 1. — On a public desk at the Vic- 
toria Falls Hotel is kept a book marked "Suggestions." 
Visitors are expected to write in it how they liked the 
falls, and suggest improvements of the service. I sug- 
gest that the average visitor does not care to spend 
four days here, as he is now compelled to do. I have 



344 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

found the last two days hanging heavily on my hands. 
The hotel at the falls is excellent, considering that it 
is a long way from its source of supplies, but trains are 
slow, and the cars dusty and crowded. The average 
train is composed of compartment cars, with a corri- 
dor running along one side. These corridors are so 
narrow that two persons cannot pass in them, and it is 
quite a task to go through a train in reaching the din- 
ing-car. I have never in my life seen such dirty cars 
as they have in South Africa, but this is partly owing 
to the terrible dust which prevails everywhere; an- 
other explanation is that, as a rule, one porter is ex- 
pected to clean all the cars, and in some cases there 
is no porter. But the trainmen are always polite, and 
the tracks good. The dining-cars would be satis- 
factory were they not overcrowded. Traveling in 
South Africa has been easier than I expected, and the 
hotels better, but some of the dust in the railway cars 
might be easily removed; the addition of one Kaffir 
and one broom to each train would prove a great help. 
. . . Near the railway station live two men who 
deal in curios. Both are hunters, and both are inter- 
esting, and I spend a good deal of time with them; 
but they hate each other in a way that is scandalous. 
There never was such a thing as rivals in business get- 
ting along. They try hard not to say anything against 
each other, but their enmity crops out in every con- 
versation. One of them is married, and has his wife 
and baby here, and a bishop will arrive tomorrow to 
baptize the baby. The other man is a bachelor, and 
is trying hard to catch a leopard while I am here, in 
an American steel trap. Leopards prowl about the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 345 

hotel every night, and several hunters have told me 
that a leopard is a more dangerous animal than a lion. 
A leopard is like a bulldog : he hasn't sense enough to 
know about danger. . . . The dreaded tsetse-fly 
is found in this vicinity, and cases of sleeping sickness 
are not unknown. I had always imagined that a man 
suffering with sleeping sickness became drowsy, and 
slept a great deal, but residents say that, while the 
patient is drowsy, he cannot sleep, and is very restless. 
They describe sleeping sickness as resembling con- 
sumption in many ways. ... In the vicinity of 
the curio shop is a police camp, in charge of a corporal. 
The police patrol this district, and this morning I saw 
a white soldier start out on a trek to last two weeks. 
He rode a mule, as horses do not thrive in this country. 
Two pack donkeys were led by two natives; one a 
cook, and the other an enlisted police officer. The two 
natives will walk during the entire journey, and one of 
them will carry a gun. The patrol officer told me he 
would travel about eighteen miles a day, starting every 
morning about five, resting from nine to three, and then 
traveling from three until nightfall. He rarely makes 
more than three miles an hour, as the donkeys are slow, 
and the sand deep. Wherever you walk here, you are 
compelled to wade through sand; sand is the soil in 
most parts of Africa. . . . The patrol officer calls 
at every house he encounters, and asks the owner to 
report any disorder in his neighborhood. The patrol 
officer did not carry a tent, and I asked him why. 
"Because," he answered, "we don't need it ; there will 
be no rain." After the short rainy season, the wel- 
come patter of rain is not heard for nine months. . . . 



346 TKAVEL LETTERS FROM 

The engineer who attends to the electric-light plant 
at the Victoria Falls Hotel is an intelligent young fel- 
low who, with a brother, tried farming in a remote 
district in Rhodesia. They are about starving; they 
would have starved had not this brother gone to work. 
The other brother lives alone on the farm, and at in- 
tervals comes to the hotel for supplies provided by his 
brother. They will eventually desert their farm, with- 
out much doubt. . . . The young soldiers at the 
police camp are industrious hunters, and one of them 
says he lately killed a crocodile on the railroad bridge 
which crosses the Zambesi river below the falls. Croco- 
diles often travel considerable distances from the river ; 
in returning to water, this one by accident struck the 
railroad track, and was following it across the bridge. 
The soldiers at the camp have all sorts of pets, includ- 
ing monkeys, which they pick up when young, and tame. 
They irrigate a considerable garden with water carried 
from the river by natives. This section must be a 
terrific place when the weather is at its worst ; it is at 
its best now, and we stand it with difficulty. 



Wednesday, April 2. — We said good-by to Victoria 
Falls this afternoon at 1 : 10, and left by train for the 
East Coast. Captain Moseley came to the station 
to see us, bringing all his hunting-dogs with him. To- 
morrow morning at 3 o'clock he leaves for his new sta- 
tion in the interior, traveling in a wagon dra^vm by 
eight yoke of oxen and driven by two negroes. One 
of the negroes will sit up all night, to watch the graz- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 347 

ing cattle, and guard the camp, and every afternoon 
he will sleep in the wagon. Ox teams travel very 
slowly, and the captain will walk most of the way, and 
hunt as he goes along. A negro servant accompanies 
him as cook, and will remain with him at the new sta- 
tion. His nearest white neighbors will be sixty miles 
away, and he does not expect to receive mail more than 
once in three months. . . . The train is not 
crowded, for a wonder, and we were given a double 
compartment thrown into one. Our traveling ac- 
quaintances, Mrs. Meek and her daughter Bettie, are 
still wdth us, and they have equally good accommo- 
dations. The South-African railway men take good 
care of you when it is possible. . . . The Bishop 
arrived at the Falls this morning, and baptized the 
photographer's baby. A young curate came with him, 
and sat on the veranda and drank five highballs in 
quick succession. But the incident, like women smok- 
ing cigarettes in public, attracted no comment here. 
The Bishop is a genial man, and was soon surrounded 
by the women. The women dearly love an ordinary 
preacher, but to talk to a Bishop is an event in a 
church-worker's life she never forgets. . . . Dur- 
ing the dry season, full-grown cattle may be bought in 
parts of South Africa at $10 a head. . . . When I 
went into the hotel dining-room for breakfast this 
morning, the head waiter informed me in a whisper 
that a few fresh eggs had just been received from the 
hotel farm, and advised me to order soft-boiled eggs. 
This head waiter was born in the West Indies, and 
some of the men under him are Hindus, some of them 
negroes, and some of them Portuguese. . . . This 



348 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is written on a piece of railroad track seventy-four 
miles long without a single cuive, which is not a very 
big story: in Argentine, South America, there is a 
similar piece of track twice as long. . . . Possibly 
the reader imagines that 'way over here I am a stranger 
in a strange land. As a matter of fact, I know nearly 
every passenger on this train ; also, the conductor, 
and the waiters in the dining-car. I came up with 
the trainmen, and I spent four days with the passen- 
gers at Victoria Falls. All of them are either English 
or Colonials; no Americans except ourselves. Awhile 
ago, the conductor came into my compartment to visit 
awhile. He is an Englishman, but astonished me by 
saying that he likes German ships better than English 
ships. On English ships, he says, visitors are looked at 
with suspicion, whereas visitors are always welcome 
on a German ship. The conductor will go through 
with us to Beira, from Bulawayo, and has promised 
to do his best for us in the way of securing accommo- 
dations on the train. Englishmen who live out here 
soon have their sharp edges worn off, and become more 
agreeable. . . . There are certain American things 
that seem to be universal. Wherever we go, we see 
Eastman's kodaks. National cash registers, Selig's 
moving pictures, Colgate's perfumes and soap. Cham- 
berlain's cough syrup, the Ladies' Home Journal, Rob- 
ert Chambers's books, and Mr. Rockefeller's gasoline. 
. . . It costs a good deal of money to have washing 
done over here, and we are wondering over the fact 
that the most reasonable laundry bill we have paid 
was at the Victoria Falls Hotel, where we expected 
nothing but highway robbery. When we registered 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 349 

at that hotel, the manager said he had two rooms re- 
served for us. They were double rooms, excellently 
located. Mrs. Meek and her daughter slept in one 
room, on two small beds, and they are grumbling be- 
cause they were charged exactly what we were charged. 
It is so unusual for me to get the best of it that I am 
rather enjoying their indignation. ... I have 
often heard of the extreme brightness of the nights in 
Africa. I cannot see that they are any brighter than 
the nights at home, except that there are a good many 
more prominent stars. In the north, we hear a great 
deal of the Southern Cross. We see it every night, 
but consider it insignificant. We are on the opposite 
side of the earth from Kansas, and the constellations 
we see there cannot be seen here. Pope, the English- 
man, in describing great distance, wrote : "Far as the 
polar walk or milky way." The people in Africa don't 
understand the sentence : the milky way cannot be 
seen here, nor is our big dipper visible. . . . Tonight 
at ten o'clock, before going to bed, I went forward into 
the dining-car to get a drink of water, and found the 
car full of men drinking; a custom more common in 
this country than at home. The English laugh at our 
American habit of drinking ice-water. There is a cer- 
tain Hot Water much worse, known as John Barley- 
corn, and Englishmen drink too much of it. . . . 
Poor Mrs. Atterbury, who has lived in South Africa 
nineteen years without a sight of her old home in St. 
Joseph, Missouri, says she longs to go home in order 
that she may again see pretty girls and babies. Mrs. 
Meek, our traveling acquaintance, who has always lived 
in the Transvaal, admits that pretty girls and babies 



350 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

are scarce here. They do not seem to thrive in this 
chmate. Another pecuHarity is that nearly all the 
women have black hair ; a blonde with blue eyes is a 
great rarity in Africa. When a woman's hair isn't 
black in Africa, it is a fiery red. . . . The country 
between, Victoria Falls and Bulawayo seems to be bet- 
ter developed than the country between Bulawayo and 
Mafeking. This afternoon, eighty or a hundred miles 
from the falls, we stopped at quite a coal-mining town, 
and saw great rows of coke ovens. 



N 



Thursday, April 3. — In order to reach the sea at 
Beira, we were compelled to travel back to Bulawayo 
from Victoria Falls, and remain there from 7 : 30 a. m. 
ilntil 10 : 30 p. m. We devoted the day to an auto- 
mobile ride, and visited the Khami ruins, fifteen miles 
from the town. . . . Many centuries ago, Africa 
was inhabited by a race far superior in intelligence to 
the present native negroes. These people left the coun- 
try hurriedly, for some reason, and it was one of their 
deserted towns we visited today. Some learned in- 
vestigators say the ruined and deserted cities were 
built long before the Christian era, probably in the 
time of Solomon, and that the gold with which Solo- 
mon's temple was adorned, amounting in value to ten 
million dollars, was mined in Africa. There seems to be 
no doubt that the gold mines in Rhodesia were worked 
many centuries ago ; the workers in the mines today 
find unmistakable evidence of previous occupation. 
. . . The ruins we visited are scattered over a good 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 351 

many acres, along a river in which there is only stag- 
nant water. Some of the more extensive buildings 
seem to have been used for defense. These are of 
stone, without mortar, and hundreds of feet of the walls 
are in as good condition as they ever were. There 
are great cisterns for holding water and grain, and 
modern builders say the cement was probably made 
on the ground, by a process of which they have no 
knowledge. Some of the cisterns, if cleaned out, would 
probably hold water today. Many relics have been 
picked up about the place, which may be seen in a 
museum at Bulawayo, and these indicate that the in- 
habitants were nearly as far advanced as the ancient 
Egyptians ; they were able to smelt metals, and they 
had various kinds of domestic utensils, pottery, im- 
plements of war, etc. The people of Khami knew 
something of dentistry, of medicine, and of astronomy. 
Five hundred ruins or vestiges of former buildings are 
found in Rhodesia, extending over an area 800 by 700 
miles, and all these are undoubtedly much older than 
Columbus, and probably older than Christ. . . . 
Recently ruins have been found in Thibet very much 
older than the ruins in Egypt, and, as investigations 
are more carefully made, the fact becomes more ap- 
parent that no one has yet been able to realize how old 
the world actually is. . . . In going to the Khami 
ruins, we passed hundreds of negro women walking 
into Bulawayo and carrying vegetables, chickens, fire- 
wood, etc. They were all naked above the waist, and 
invariably carried their loads on their heads ; one 
woman carried a watermelon in this unusual way. 
The chickens were carried in rough home-made baskets. 



352 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

. . . The ruined city of Khami is in a wild and 
desolate country. On the way there, we saw only one 
or two farm-houses occupied by white men, and not 
many native huts. The country looked dry and worth- 
less, and the roads were badly washed by torrential 
rains. The ruins are located in hills, and the day was 
so hot that we did not climb up to several of the most 
extensive-looking fortresses. Nothing is positively 
known about Khami ; who the people were who built 
the town, when it was built, how long occupied, or when 
deserted, is pure conjecture. 



Friday, April 4. — We should have left Bulawayo 
last night at 10 : 30, but the train was late, and we did 
not get away until after 1 o'clock this morning. By the 
time we got our beds made, it was almost time to get 
up for breakfast. This is the first time we have found 
a train more than a few minutes late in either Austra- 
lia, New Zealand, or Africa. ... I awoke at day- 
light in the prettiest country we have seen in Africa; 
a country as handsome as the prairies of Illinois must 
have been a hundred years ago. Thousands of acres 
of gently rolling prairie land, but it looks better than 
it really is. In 1896 the dreaded rinderpest killed all 
the cattle and game in this section, and carts stood idle 
in the roads because there were no oxen to move them ; 
the air was rendered offensive by the stench from dead 
animals. Whether you try to raise stock, fruit or corn 
here, you have pests to deal with, and they seem to be 
more persistent and numerous than pests are else- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 353 

where. We hear of great drouths, and of the people 
paying a shiUing a gallon for water. Some of the 
towns have built electric-light plants, but often there 
is no water for the engines, and people use candles for 
illuminating. Enterprising men build modern hotels 
in the towns, but frequently there is no water for the 
modern baths, and the guests do well to get enough 
water to drink. . . . Another pest here is white 
ants. They kill forest trees, and undermine the founda- 
tions of houses ; they devour furniture and clothing — 
yet the country is so fair that it seems a pity to turn 
it over to desolation. On the line between Bulawayo 
and Salisbury there are a good many towns, including 
one built around the best gold mine in Rhodesia. And 
how the people turned out to see the train come in! 
At one place we estimated that there must have been 
five hundred around the station. Trains travel over 
the line only two or three times a week, and people 
seem to come from great distances in the country to 
see the trains go by. But between the stations there 
were millions of acres of land as wild as it was in the 
days of Adam. . . . Early in the morning our 
English passengers walked about in pajamas when we 
stopped at stations; Englishmen love that sort of 
thing. At Victoria Falls they visited the Rain Forest 
in pajamas, and in Johamiesburg I was told that on 
Sundays and holidays, pajamas are worn around houses 
and yards until lunch-time. Englishmen show their 
pajamas so much that I cordially hate that particular 
form of night-dress ; Englishmen have the same pas- 
sion for running around in pajamas that American 
boys have for running around in baseball suits. . . . 



354 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

In Spite of occasional calamities such as 115 in the shade, 
and drinking-water selling at a shilling a gallon, Rho- 
desia is progressive, and encourages every enterprise. 
I have been frequently told here that the United States 
agricultural bulletins are the best in the world, and that 
they are read with interest in Rhodesia. Another 
statement you hear frequently in Africa : "They have 
adopted the American method;" but the trouble is, 
they haven't the American means to work with. . . . 
A London man told me today that he buys Harper's 
Magazine regularly for two cents, although Americans 
are asked thirty-five cents for it. A good many of the 
American magazines sell their surplus copies in Lon- 
don at ridiculously low prices. . . . The negroes 
in the most civilized portions of Africa practice witch- 
craft, and the authorities are compelled to closely 
watch the native doctors and priests, to prevent out- 
rages and murders. . . . We arrived in Salisbury 
at 5 : 30 in the evening, and remained there four hours ; 
railroad trains make long stops at stations here without 
any apparent reason, unless it is that the engineer, 
station-master and guard cannot agree on starting. 
The first preliminary for starting a train in Africa is 
for the station-master to ring a hand-bell. Next the 
guard blows a tin whistle, to indicate that he is ready, 
and the engineer then blows a blast on the steam whistle. 
I have heard these preliminaries gone through with a 
dozen times before the train finally started ; when the 
station-master is ready, the engineer isn't, and when 
both these officials are ready to start, the guard isn't. 
When the guard is ready, the engineer and station- 
master seem to conclude to let him wait awhile. And 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 355 

SO, after a time, they begin all over again, and, in the 
course of fifteen minutes, finally get away. . . . 
There is an English woman on the train who is leaving 
Africa because of bad health. Her husband is also 
an invalid, as a result of the fever; in addition, he 
lost everything he brought to the country. This 
woman says there is a plague for everything in Africa. 
We walked about Salisbury with her, while waiting 
for the train to depart at 9 : 30 p. m., and the town 
seemed as disconsolate as our traveling acquaintance. 
. . . I ate dinner in Salisbury at a little restaurant, 
and shall always remember the place, because of two 
very pretty girl waiters, and because of the large num- 
ber of young men who came in to flirt with them. 



Saturday, April 5. — Soon after breakfast this morn- 
ing, we passed out of Rhodesia into Portuguese East 
Africa, at a little town the name of which I have for- 
gotten. A Portuguese customs officer came on board, 
but did not bother us, beyond asking if we had either 
pistols or guns in our luggage. Being assured that we 
had not, he bowed very politely, and departed. The 
governor of Portuguese East Africa joined us at this 
station, traveling in a private car with his wife and a 
party of friends. A number of ladies and gentlemen 
had gathered to say good-by to the governor and his 
lady, and I shall never forget the politeness of these 
people. Our compartment was within a few feet of the 
observation end of the private car, but the Portuguese 
never saw us, while other people on the train stared 



356 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

at US as though we were very odd specimens of human- 
ity. . . . Soon after passing into Portuguese terri- 
tory, the railroad ran through mountains, and the ride 
was interesting all the way to Beira, which town we 
reached at 9 : 30 p. m. This section is tropical, and 
bananas and cocoanuts grow in profusion. Near one 
town we saw hundreds of acres of growing corn ; and 
it was much better corn than we had been seeing in 
Rhodesia and other parts of South Africa. It wasn't 
such corn as we grow, but it was probably half as good 
as an ordinary crop in eastern Kansas. I estimated one 
field I saw at four or five hundred acres; there were 
several others of fifty to a hundred acres. But the 
fields were widely separated. In eastern Kansas every 
foot of the land is devoted to crops, or pasture, or 
orchard, but here the occasional fields of corn were 
separated by miles of wild land. There is more rain 
in this section than in the vicinity of Bulawayo or 
Victoria Falls, and the stations on the railway more 
numerous. ... As evening approached, we no- 
ticed that in the native villages, pots were boiling at 
open fires in front of the huts. Cook-stoves are un- 
known among the natives, and they have very little 
to eat except corn-meal mush. They make an intoxi- 
cating liquor out of corn-meal, and their holidays are 
largely devoted to revelry. The natives nearly all have 
cows, and drink a good deal of milk, first letting it sour, 
and become what we call clabber. Some of the great- 
est scientists claim that the free use of clabber-milk 
will preserve life well beyond a hundred years. The 
primitive races which live longest are liberal users of 
sour milk, which is claimed to destroy an intestinal 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 357 

bacteria very fatal to human life. . . . The line 
of railroad to the sea at Beira was built to get cattle to 
market from the fly district, Natal and the Cape hav- 
ing quarantined against cattle in Rhodesia and other 
districts subject to disease. The line from Bulawayo 
is seven hundred miles long, and operated through 
Portuguese territory by special concession. It passes 
through as interesting a country as we have seen in 
Africa. ... At seven o'clock in the evening we 
passed into a swampy country, and mosquitoes became 
a pest. These were the dangerous mosquitoes, and 
we fought them viciously. And all day the weather 
had been oppressively hot. . . . At 9 : 30 p. m. we 
reached Beira, and had to pass our baggage through 
the custom-house. This ceremony concluded, we went 
to the Savoy Hotel in what they call a "trolley" here. 
A narrow-gauge street railway has been laid all over 
Beira, but cars are not operated either by electric or 
horse power. Every citizen owns his own car, a small, 
light affair pushed by negro men. On the principal 
streets there are three tracks, and there is a system by 
which traffic is regulated. When we went up-town in 
a passenger trolley, the hotel porter came along behind, 
with our baggage on a freight trolley. Freight of ev- 
ery kind is carried to every part of Beira by these 
street-railway Unes, and there are little steam locomo- 
tives which handle heavy freight at night. Beira is a 
Portuguese town, and passing through it at night on 
a trolley pushed by two negro men, was an unusual 
experience. When we reached the postoffice, the mail 
trolleys were unloading, and we were compelled to 
wait several minutes. . . . Reaching the Savoy 



358 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Hotel, which is modern and comfortable, we went out 
on the veranda in front of our rooms, and saw the 
German ship "Burgermeister," brilliantly lighted up, 
lying in the harbor. We shall go on board tomorrow, 
and remain twenty-four days, until we reach Naples, 
in Italy. 



Sunday, April 6. — This morning we took a ride 
around Beira on a trolley pushed by a negro man. The 
site of Beira is a sandbar reclaimed from the sea, and 
there is not a horse in the town ; indeed, there is not 
a horse within a hundred and fifty miles of Beira, 
owing to the horse disease. There are no mule or ox- 
drawn vehicles, and no automobiles, owing to the 
streets of sand, so the queer street railway supplies all 
transportation. There are cement sidewalks, but in 
the middle of the street the sand is ankle-deep. . . . 
The town looks like Manila, in a way, except that it is 
not so large. Banana and cocoanut trees grow every- 
where in dooryards, as do the bright red flowers com- 
mon in the tropics. Every house is raised six or seven 
feet above the ground, for additional coolness, and un- 
der many houses we saw natives cooking meals at open 
fires. In front of nearly every house was a private 
trolley ; we saw hundreds of them during the ride. 
They were usually for two passengers, and covered, for 
the sun is always very hot here. I should say the av- 
erage private trolley costs fifteen or twenty dollars, 
and has four light iron wheels. One man may easily 
lift a trolley off the track, which is the manner of dis- 
posing of them when not in use. As the town grows, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 359 

the street-railway tracks are extended, and many house- 
owners build private lines to their premises. It is the 
most curious thing I have seen on the trip ; I had never 
before seen street railways of this kind, or heard of 
them. There is a bathing-beach here, and it can be 
reached only by these peculiar hand-pushed cars. The 
street railway lines extend not only to every residence 
section, but to every business section, and to the rail- 
road yards as well as to the ship docks. The lines were 
built by the city, and were not very expensive, as the 
rails are light. The up-keep is provided for by an an- 
nual tax paid by every trolley-owner for the privilege 
of using the tracks. Many business men have Several 
trolleys ; one or more for their own use, one or more 
for the use of their families, and one or more for freight 
purposes. Although the streets of Beira are composed 
entirely of sand, the sand is heavy, and does not blow 
about as dust. The weather last night was cool, but 
the days are very hot. . . . The Savoy Hotel at 
Beira overlooks the sea, and its grounds would be 
flooded at high tide but for the protection afforded by 
a sea-wall. One might sit on the back porches of the 
hotel, and fish in the sea. The waiters are native boys 
wearing white coats, and dresses such as women wear. 
A black man wearing a coat and dress is a queer sight, 
and I know of nothing in towns more unusual than 
Beira. It is thoroughly Portuguese, and everything is 
quaint and picturesque. Beira has a very bad reputa- 
tion ; you hear up the line that everjd^hing that is dis- 
agreeable will happen to you there, but we rather liked 
the place. The hotel was good, and the people polite ; 
we encountered nothing disagreeable at Beira except 



360 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

tremendously hot weather. . . . We went aboard 
the "Burgermeister" at 2 p. m., and sailed two hours 
later. A Cape Town theatrical man named Sam 
Marks, had a letter of introduction to us from travel- 
ing acquaintances, and secured us seats at table with 
his wife and three other English-speaking people. So 
everything was very pleasant until Adelaide went down 
to her room to dress for dinner. She found that she 
had been assigned to a cabin with a Portuguese woman 
and a little baby. The woman cannot speak English, 
and has a Kaffir man nurse for the baby. The Kaffir 
man is in the woman's room most of the time looking 
after the baby, and was there when Adelaide went down 
to dress. The chief steward, when the matter was 
called to his attention, was sorry, but proposed no 
other remedy than to keep the negro boy out. We 
then took the matter up with the captain, who speaks 
very good English, and he arranged it by giving Ade- 
laide a room to herself. . . . No religious services 
were held on board in honor of the day, but a dance 
was held on deck, in the evening. The ship band plays 
a concert every morning at 10 : 30, and every even- 
ing at 9 the orchestra plays. . . . When we left 
Beira, the sea was as smooth as a mill-pond. At 10 
p. M. a wireless telegram announced that a bad storm 
was raging there. For several days we have had in- 
tensely hot weather, but at sea we found a delightfully 
cool breeze, and Captain Ulrich says that at this season 
we should have smooth seas and agreeable weather all 
the way to Naples. . . . The passengers are mainly 
Germans, as this is a German ship. There are a few 
English, a few Colonials, and a few Portuguese, but 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 361 

we are the only Americans. In the steerage there is a 
great minghng of races, including Hindus, negroes and 
Arabs. These people bring their own bedding, and do 
their o^\ti cooking. As soon as the freight was stored 
away, and the forward hatchway covered, the steerage 
passengers settled down for the night, and produced 
their bedding and cooking utensils. Some of them eat 
rice, and some of them eat corn-meal mush, but all of 
them eat with their fingers. Somewhere a fire is pro- 
vided where they may cook their food, and plenty of 
water may be had at a convenient faucet. The firemen 
are Arabs, and they mingle with the steerage passen- 
gers. I had always imagined that an Arab was fond 
of ease, and lazy, but Captain Ulrich says they are the 
most reliable firemen to be had, and the most efficient. 



Monday, April 7. — We have spent a good part of 
this day lying off Chindi, a decaying town at the mouth 
of the Zambesi river. We arrived at 9 a. m., and an- 
chored in the open sea, where we rolled and pitched 
gently until 4 : 30 p. m. It seems the " Burgermeister" 
is ahead of time, and the tender did not come off until 
2 : 30 p. M. It brought two hundred negro boys, six- 
teen to eighteen years old, and entirely naked except 
that each one wore a cloth about the loins. These boys 
had been sent to work on sugar plantations by labor 
agents, who received a pound each for finding them. 
But the boys soon contracted dysentery, and are being 
sent home. When the tender came alongside, many 
of the boys were seasick, and some of them crjdng. 



362 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

They were transferred from the tender to the ship in a 
huge basket, ten or twelve at a time. Many of the 
boys had sore feet, having walked to Chindi from the 
plantations where they were employed. All of them 
were thin in flesh, and nine out of ten had no baggage ; 
nothing to eat out of, and nothing to sleep on : no 
possession whatever except a loin-cloth, and some of 
these were made of grass, or of old matting. The 
slaves of olden days could not have presented a much 
worse spectacle. These boys worked on the sugar 
plantations at $1.75 per month. Counting interest on 
money invested, and taldng into consideration the fact 
that old slaves must be cared for, that is cheaper than 
owning slaves. . . . Ten white passengers also 
came out on the tender, and of course these were 
brought on board before the negroes. The passenger 
l)asket is a huge wicker affair in which six to ten per- 
sons are locked. Then it is hoisted, by means of a 
donkey engine, from the tender to the deck of the ship, 
or vice versa. Sometimes, when passengers are dis- 
embarking, and the basket is being lowered to the deck 
of the tender, the waves send the tender upward 
quickly, and the passengers get a bad jolt. In the open 
sea, the small tenders roll and knock about so much 
that this method of handling passengers is necessary. 
Several children were brought on board, and in every 
case they screamed with fright. But if the tackle 
holds, the method is safe enough. . . . The "Bur- 
germeister" is the best ship we have been on since 
leaving home. The food is abundant, and well cooked, 
and the service excellent in all respects. Captain Ul- 
rich is the youngest captain I have ever seen on a 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 363 

steamship ; he is not more than forty years old, and 
probably under that age. He is a famous man on the 
line because of the dignified interest he takes in pas- 
sengers. He told me last night that during the present 
trip he hadn't had an hour of bad weather ; and he 
left Hamburg February 25, and came through the 
dreaded Bay of Biscay and the stormy English channel. 
. . . Chindi is the port of entry for Nyasaland and 
Northern Rhodesia, and the Zambesi river enters the 
ocean there. Small boats ply on the river, and there 
are sugar plantations in the interior. It is generally 
believed that Chindi will be greatly harmed by a new 
railroad to be built from Beira. . . . Nyasaland 
is one of the modern achievements in colonization. 
Although in the heart of the Dark Continent, and given 
over only a few years ago to the most appalling bar- 
barism, it now has a railway service, settlements lit by 
electricity, vast tracts of land under scientific cultiva- 
tion, an improved wagon-road 100 miles long, a stable 
government, and cheap land, on which may be grown 
corn, cotton, and tobacco. I hear even at this distance 
of one planter who made $10,000 in one year from to- 
bacco. ... In order to reach Nyasaland at pres- 
ent, travelers leave ships five miles off Chindi, being 
transferred to tenders in baskets. At Chindi they take 
small boats for Port Herald, two hundred miles up 
the Zambesi river. The negro engineers on these 
steamboats get $3.75 a month. The captain of the 
boat is a white man, and an engineer, but natives have 
learned his trade, and now do all the work in the en- 
gine-room. This is true all over Africa : the white 
men show the negroes, and the negroes pick up all the 



364 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

trades. At Port Herald begins a railroad one hundred 
and thirteen miles long, with very stiff grades, running 
into the interior. There are only four white men em- 
ployed on the line : the general manager, the traffic 
superintendent, the chief accountant, and the locomo- 
tive foreman. All the telegraphers are negroes, and 
do their work well for $2.50 a month. In order to be- 
come telegraphers, it was necessary for them to learn 
to read and write English. The head boy in the gen- 
eral offices of the railway, a very capable clerk, gets 
$3.75 a month. The locomotive engineers are Hindus, 
and receive $30 a month ; but the firemen are all ne- 
groes, and receive but $3.75 a month. All the firemen 
are capable of running engines, and do run them at 
times. It is only a question of a few years until ne- 
groes succeed the high-priced Hindus as locomotive en- 
^gineers. The section reached by the railroad is devoted 
largely to tobacco and cotton. One planter has five 
hundred acres in tobacco, and employs eight hundred 
natives ; it is estimated there that tobacco requires a 
man and a half to every acre. These natives receive 
$1.25 a month and board, but their board costs only 
two cents a day ; they eat only corn-meal, which costs 
a dollar a hundred pounds as a rule. That amounts to 
less than $2 a month for a good workman. A tobacco 
planter in Nyasaland is satisfied if he gets five hundred 
pounds of cured tobacco per acre, one-third of the yield 
in the United States, and he sells it on an average for 
seven or eight cents a pound. You would think his 
freight bill would eat up his profits, but he pays only 
half a cent a pound for transporting his crop to London. 
The rate is purposely made very low, to encourage to- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 365 

bacco-growing. It is not equally low on second-class 
merchandise in other parts of Africa; that rate from 
Capetown to Bulawayo, a merchant told me, is four 
cents a pound. . . . Food is very cheap in the in- 
terior of Africa. In Nyasaland, a half-dozen chickens 
may be bought for twenty-four cents. A young man 
on board is an employee of the Eastern Telegraph Co., 
and is being transferred to Zanzibar. He says he has 
chicken so frequently that he despises it ; his associates 
lately joined him in a protest to the company against 
chicken. The chickens here are small and tough : ev- 
ery native raises chickens, which are compelled to pick 
up a living : they are not fed. The natives do not eat 
them, but carry them great distances to market. . . . 
The whisky used by the natives is made of corn, by 
a very simple process. They crush the grains of corn, 
pour water over the mass, and allow it to ferment. 
Then they add water, and put it away in earthen jars 
until needed. . . . One of the most interesting 
men on board is an official of the British company 
which built the railroad from Port Herald, two hun- 
dred miles up the Zambesi river from Chindi, into 
Nyasaland. He is going to England for his vacation ; 
the ships are all crowded now, as this is the favorite 
season for the exiles to go home. He says the English 
cotton and tobacco planters in Nyasaland are not very 
prosperous ; they make a living, but not much more. 
They are pioneers, and pioneers rarely make a great 
deal of money. This man is named Metcalf, and had 
an attack of the African fever today. He dosed him- 
self with quinine, and, going to bed, covered himself 
with blankets. There he perspired and suffered until 



366 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

the attack wore off. Many of the passengers of the 
" Burgermeister " are invalids going home to recuperate 
after an experience with the climate of Africa. 



Tuesday, April 8. — It is fortunate I am not sea- 
sick, and laid up, for my cabin window looks out on 
the deck where the steerage passengers are. Early 
this morning I heard a babel of voices, and supposed 
all the negro boys were on deck, and talking at the 
same time. Looking out of my window, I discovered 
that fifteen or twenty Hindus were doing all the talk- 
ing, while the two hundred negro boys were sitting 
around in perfect silence. The steerage passengers can 
look into my room, if so disposed, and often do. Be- 
fore I finished dressing, the two hundred negro boys 
were fed. Each was given three ship biscuits, and 
weak tea was provided for those who could get to it. 
When the boys gathered around the teakettle, they re- 
minded me of pigs around a swill-trough. The stronger 
boys drank the tea from cups made out of the hollow 
of their hands, and the weaker ones, or runts, got none. 
Several of the boys were living skeletons, and had evi- 
dently been very ill. I threw an apple to one of the 
runts, but he had never seen that kind of fruit before, 
and I was compelled to inform him by means of signs 
that it was good to eat. . . . Six of the boys sat 
together, and divided everything given them. I was 
told that they were brothers, although there wasn't a 
year's difference in their ages. Their father probably 
has a dozen wives, as polygamy is practiced by nearly 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 367 

all the natives. . . . While the negro boys were 
scrambling for the scant food provided by the steam- 
ship company, the other deck passengers were eating 
breakfasts of their own providing. In one place, six 
Hindu men were eating, seated in a circle ; they seemed 
to be traveling together. In every party of Hindus, 
one of the number seems to be a half-servant, and he 
waits on the others. Several of the negro passengers 
are dressed like the Hindus, and do not seem to know 
any other language than Hindu. Other parties of 
diners on the deck were Arabs, and all ate with their 
fingers. Yesterday, as soon as the ship anchored off 
Chindi, the Hindus began fishing, the pastime of lazy 
people everywhere. All of them had hooks and lines 
in their baggage, and the cook provided them with 
fresh meat for bait. A dozen or more fish were caught, 
of a variety resembling our catfish. One Hindu fam- 
ily caught three fish, which were "cleaned" for dinner 
in the dirtiest manner imaginable. I saw the Hindu 
mother finally prepare the fish for the fire, and this was 
the way she did it : Each piece of fish was dusted with 
curry powder before going in the pot, as we dust fish 
in cracker-meal for frying. Then she put in a few 
pieces of potato and onion, and a crushed mass of some 
sort of vegetable. The woman's hands being covered 
with curry and the crushed vegetable referred to above, 
she washed them in water, and poured the water into 
the pot with the fish. Then the half-servant took the 
pot away, and evidently placed it on the stove of the 
crew cook. In an hour he brought it back, and the 
mess was allowed to cool, after which the six members 
of the family gathered around, and ate with their fin- 



368 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

gers. The mother made a drink in the following manner : 
A little condensed milk was poured into a dirty wash- 
basin nearly full of water. Sugar was added, and this 
beverage was passed about, and drank with a relish. 
One member of the family was a girl of fourteen, rather 
pretty, but dirty beyond description. A boy of eleven 
was also very good-looking. The mother, after dinner, 
lit a cigarette, and handed it occasionally to her hus- 
band, who took a few puffs, and handed it back to his 
wife. . . . Speaking of smoking cigarettes, last 
evening Adelaide and I sat with a party on deck to 
drink coffee after dinner. There were five ladies in 
the party, and Adelaide was the only one who did not 
smoke a cigarette with the coffee. . . . The poorer 
class of Hindus seem to be the laziest class of people in 
the world; the poverty of the people of India is due 
more to shiftlessness than to British oppression. . . . 
The weather has been superb all day, and land in sight 
nearly all the time. 



Wednesday, April 9. — Shortly after breakfast this 
morning, we went ashore at the old Portuguese town 
of Mozambique, and wandered about until the big 
ship whistle warned us, at 1 p. m., to go on board. 
When we went down the ship's side to enter the small 
boats which carry passengers ashore at a shilling each, 
we were mobbed by the Arab boatmen, who were quar- 
reling over our patronage. They fought viciously, and 
many of them fell into the sea, but we had had no ex- 
citement for several days, and rather liked the commo- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 369 

tion. There were certainly two boatmen for every 
passenger, and the noise they made was tremendous. 
. . . Mozambique is Moorish in design, and I 
greatly enjoyed my visit there. The streets are narrow 
and crooked, and the houses hundreds of years old ; in 
some of them may still be seen the windows of mica with 
which they were originally fitted. Everywhere are the 
most delightful little parks, and wherever you go in 
the towTi you cannot see your way out, as the streets 
are crooked, and you see only queer old houses with 
thick walls of stucco. In most towns the streets are 
straight ; there are long rows of houses on either side, 
and the streets end in a distant view of the country. 
But Mozambique apparently tries to hide the fact that 
it is a small town, so no street runs straight for more 
than a block or two, when it turns ; thus you are con- 
stantly in a maze of houses. The streets are not more 
than thirty feet wide, and as all doors are open, owing 
to the intense heat, the visitor gains an intimate idea 
of the habits of the people. The Portuguese are re- 
lated to the Spanish, so their houses have interior 
courts, and these are provided with gardens or foun- 
tains, when water can be had. I have never seen any- 
thing more quaint than the shops of Mozambique ; it 
is a small, dull town, and its people are therefore po- 
lite. Seven out of ten of the inhabitants are negroes, 
but the negroes live in a location to themselves, and 
their houses are almost as unusual as the houses in the 
white town, for they differ from all the other negro 
huts I have seen in Africa. . . . Mozambique has 
an old fort, and the stones with which it is built were 
brought from Portugal in the rude ships of three or 



370 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

four hundred years ago. Its cannon are falling to 
pieces from rust, and I doubt if there is a big gun in 
the place that could be fired; but a Portuguese garri- 
son is maintained there, and we were compelled to give 
up our cameras before going in — the soldiers feared we 
might take pictures of the fortification and sell them 
to their enemies. Portugal is the weakest of all na- 
tions, and has always been kicked about. It is un- 
progressive and poor, and people out here have very 
little more respect for the Portuguese than they have 
for the Kaffirs. Brazil once belonged to the Portu- 
guese, and it became such a prosperous country that 
the court left Lisbon and located in Rio de Janeiro; 
the colony became greater than the mother country. 
But the inevitable revolution soon came, and Brazil is 
no longer a Portuguese colony, although there are more 
Portuguese there than in Portugal. Portuguese East 
Africa will become independent as soon as it wants in- 
dependence. . . . The old fort in Mozambique,, 
has been assaulted and captured by the Arabs many 
times. This section was formerly the center of the 
slave trade. The Arabs began stealing the natives of 
East Africa and selling them as slaves, but the Portu- 
guese saw that the traffic was profitable, and the two 
rivals for supremacy in what became a world industry, 
often clashed. It is related that on one occasion the 
Arabs besieged Mozambique fort many months, and 
when the garrison surrendered, only three of its de- 
fenders were left. There are no better fighters than 
the Arabs ; they made up the armies with which Ma- 
homet and his successors almost captured the world. 
The Mohammedan influence is still strong ihere ; every- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 371 

where we see black men wearing the red cap which in- 
dicates the Mohammedan. Occasionally the red fez is 
supplanted by a white embroidered cap, indicating that 
its owner has visited Mecca, the holy city. On the 
ship, most of the deck passengers are Mohammedans, 
and we often see them at their prayers. A Moham- 
medan is as proud of his religion as a Salvation Army 
man, and when he is not praying, he reads the Koran 
with as much interest as a Christian Scientist reads 
"Science and Health." As Christians say of the Bible, 
and Christian Scientists say of Mrs. Eddy's book, ev- 
ery reading of the Koran displays new beauties. . . . 
Among our deck passengers, the only one who has been 
to Mecca is a big negro, and he is as devout as a Meth- 
odist class-leader. He has a prayer-rug, and seems to 
loan it to the Indians. Both the negroes and Indians 
should be ashamed to accept the Mohammedan re- 
ligion, for it is a mark left on them by conquerors. 
Mohammedan Indians associate freely with negroes, 
but the Indians who have remained true to Hinduism 
do not. ... In the history of the human race, 
probably more cruelty was practiced in the slave trade 
between Mozambique and Zanzibar than anywhere 
else in the world. And the negroes in the interior do 
not seem to be any more capable of defense now than 
they were when anyone was at liberty to enslave them. 
Human slavery is no longer practiced, either because 
of civihzation among the stronger races, or because it 
doesn't pay. Why should a planter go to the expense 
of buying slaves when he can hire a black laborer for 
$2 a month, and confine him to quarters, and make him 
work as many hours as he chooses? This is done in 



372 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

British territory all over Africa. ... In Mozam- 
bique we visited the pubhc market, and found that 
many of the negro women had their faces whitened 
like circus clowns, in order to look like white people. 
Adelaide weighs only a hundred pounds, and has rather 
a small waist, and all the negro women thought her 
waist was disgracefully small. One of them asked if 
she might measure it with a string. Permission being 
granted, and the measurement made, the string was 
passed around, and attracted a babble of disgusted 
comment from black ladies with the middle-age spread. 
. . . Young chickens were sold at the market at 
eighteen cents each, and everything else was equally 
cheap. Mozambique is built on a coral island, three 
miles from the mainland, and everything is brought in 
by boats. . . . The Enghshman is a grave sort of 
person, and has little sense of humor, but Sammy 
Marks, the theatrical man, made me laugh today. In 
walking about Mozambique, we came across a school in 
which forty children of all races were reciting in chorus 
to an Arab teacher seated on the floor. "Children," 
Mr, Marks said to them, "don't you know this is a 
free day? Sammy Marks is in town, and you can take 
your books and go home." Some of the children un- 
derstood the words "free day," apparently, for after a 
little preliminary chatter, every child in the room 
dashed out the front door, leaving the teacher to won- 
der what had happened. The English are great in 
commerce and war, but I never before knew one who 
had a real sense of humor. . . . One of the pas- 
sengers on the " Burgermeister " is a Frenchman, and 
as he sits at our table, we know him very well. He is 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 373 

an old traveler, and knows how to handle ship servants. 
He eats more food, and drinks more wine, than any 
other human being I have ever been acquainted with. 
But he is a very polite man, and speaks German as 
well as French, so that he is of the greatest assistance 
when I get into difficulty \\dth the German waiters. 
He is always buying champagne, and has five or six 
boxes of cigars in his cabin. He usually has not only 
his waiter hovering over him when in the dining-room, 
but the chief steward as well, and his capacity for get- 
ting what he wants is so great that he amuses me, al- 
though an electrical engineer at the same table is mad 
at him, and talks about a personal encounter. . . . 
I visited Mozambique with Sammy Marks, the the- 
atrical manager from Capetown, and theatrical men 
are usually able to get what is coming to them. But 
Sammy Marks could not find a ricksha for hire in Mo- 
zambique. We saw plenty of rickshas, but were told 
that they were privately owned. Just as we acknowl- 
edged that rickshas were an impossibility in Mozam- 
bique, along came the Frenchman in one. Learning 
that Mrs. Marks and Adelaide were very tired, he gal- 
lantly turned his vehicle over to them. He went away 
for a few minutes, but soon came back riding in another 
ricksha, and continued with us in it until we returned 
to the boat-landing. Mrs. Marks speaks French like 
a native, having been born in Paris, and when I make 
a remark at table that interests her, she translates it to 
the Frenchman. One day I was asked to tell an 
"American story," and it happened to greatly amuse 
Mr. and Mrs. Marks. The Frenchman did not catch 
the "story," saying I talked too fast in telling it. 



374 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Thereupon Mrs. Marks translated it, and the French- 
man was convulsed with laughter. Mrs. Marks telling 
my "story" in French, and the Frenchman listening 
seriously and intently, was a very amusing experience 
to me. . . . When we were ready to return to the 
ship, we found the tide out, and the Arab boatmen car- 
ried us to their boats. One boatman, in carrying a 
very fat woman, stumbled and fell in the water, and 
the fat woman was soaked. . . . Arriving at the 
"Burgermeister," my boatman demanded 800 reis for 
carrying two of us to the town and back. The amount 
startled me, but it turned out that 800 reis amounts to 
only ninety-six cents in American money. ... A 
Portuguese gentleman became a passenger on the ''Bur- 
germeister" at Mozambique, and a number of friends 
came aboard to say good-by. They were so busy 
drinking in the smoking-room that they did not note the 
whistle which blew for visitors to depart ; so when we 
were a mile out, we were compelled to stop, and signal 
for a tug to come after them. As the visitors departed 
each one embraced his friend again, with great delib- 
eration. Meanwhile Captain Ulrich was walking the 
bridge, swearing like a pirate. Just when it was 
thought the captain would explode with indignation, 
he was told that the mail had not been sent on board, 
and he was actually compelled to turn the huge ship 
around and return to the harbor, where we whistled 
ten minutes before the sleepy Portuguese put off in a 
boat to see what the noise was about. We were de- 
layed an hour and a half by the sleepy Portuguese, 
and nearly everyone on board is cursing them. The 
Portuguese are everywhere regarded as slow and un- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 375 

enterprising, and countries controlled by them do not 
prosper. ... I shall long remember Mozambique 
as the quaintest town I have ever visited. I had never 
heard of it, therefore it was a surprise. 



Thursday, April 10. — I awoke very early this morn- 
ing, and found unloading in progress at Port Amelia. 
The deck passengers were up, as it was necessary to 
disturb them in order to remove the hatches and get 
at the cargo. But when we are at sea, the deck pas- 
sengers divide the space over the forward hatch, and 
make rooms for themselves with bundles and boxes. 
Some of them have carpets in their bundles, and nearly 
all of them have bedding. A tarpaulin forms a cov- 
ering over them, and at night their quarters are lighted 
by a bunch of electric lights. It is surprising how well 
these deck passengers get along, and how comfortable 
they are. They may buy supplies of the ship steward, 
and seem to have plenty to eat. Most of them are 
going back to India, which is not far away from this 
coast. It was from India that the small Arab boats 
came, after the Mohammedan conquest, and made 
slaves of hundreds of thousands of the people of the 
East Coast of Africa. . . . Here is an exact de- 
scription of a dinner I saw six Indians eat yesterday 
evening : They squatted around a large pan of rice, 
which had been cooking most of the afternoon on the 
galley stove. In the centre of the rice was placed a 
small pan containing a yellow liquid ; probably curry. 
In the curr3^-pan was a spoon, and the diners used this 



376 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

spoon to ladle out the curry into the rice. Each man 
covered the portion of rice in front of him with curry, 
and then stirred up the mass with his fingers, in order 
that the curry might be thoroughly mixed with the 
rice. The diners were very polite ; when one of them 
used the spoon, he passed it on to the man next to him. 
The rice and curry being thoroughly mixed, the diners 
made it into balls with their fingers, and put it in their 
mouths. During the meal they discussed the gossip 
of the day in the most animated manner, as do diners 
who have many articles of food, served with plate and 
silver. One old Hindu in the party doesn't seem to be 
very well, and he soon retired from the circle, and three 
others followed him not long after, but two young 
fellows remained until both pans were scraped clean. 
Civilized men eat a great variety of food, but the more 
primitive races do not seem to care for it. . . . Port 
Amelia is located in the finest harbor I have seen in 
Africa, but it is in the wilds, and does not amount to 
much. The place was founded by a major in the Eng- 
lish army, who had been cashiered for bad conduct. 
He sold his rights to a British company, which secured 
a franchise for a railroad to Lake Nyanza, and hopes 
to finally be able to finance the venture. Any story 
of the American frontier may be duplicated in Africa ; 
adventurers are bold, and capital timid. Several Arab 
boats which seemed to be hundreds of years old, came 
off after cargo. These boats do not exceed sixty or 
seventy feet in length, and sail all along the coast and 
to India. Several of the passengers accompanied Cap- 
tain Ulrich ashore before breakfast. The captain is an 
enthusiastic photographer, and takes pictures in natural 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 377 

colors with an ordinary camera. Anyone may do it 
by using the special plates which are sold in most trade 
centres. The captain sells his pictures in Germany 
for very good prices. . . . Port Amelia was a 
short horse, and soon curried, and by 10 a. m. we were 
out at sea again, being entertained by a Hindu fakir 
who obtained permission to come up on our deck. 
This man has been my neighbor ever since I came 
aboard at Beira ; he is camped on deck, with his family, 
in front of my window. He has a wife, a daughter of 
fourteen, a son of twenty, and a son of nine, and an 
old retainer who seems to be half cook and half as- 
sistant. My neighbor proved to be the cleverest man 
of his class I had ever seen. The collection amounted 
to only $2.50, and the old man was considerably dis- 
appointed, saying he did better in the second cabin 
the day before. The son of twenty attempted a trick, 
but failed to do it, and was hooted by the passengers. 
Then the father attempted it, and succeeded without 
any difficulty. The old fakir knew me, having seen 
me in my room many times, from his quarters on deck, 
and addressed most of his conversation to me while 
doing his tricks. He talks a little of half a dozen lan- 
guages, and Sammy Marks, the theatrical manager, says 
the old fellow would prove a drawing card at any 
theatre. . . . There is a woman on board who is 
said to resemble the late Queen Victoria. I think she 
started the story herself, as she seems very proud of 
the alleged resemblance. . . . The people on this 
ship are much politer, and much quieter, than were the 
passengers on the English ship "Anchises," on which 
we sailed from Australia to South Africa. The Eng- 



378 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

lish go crazy about ship sports, and greatly annoy those 
who want to be quiet, but the Germans are more con- 
siderate of others. 



Friday, April 11. — We have spent this day in the 
open sea. Usually we are in sight of land, but if there 
has been any in sight today I have not seen it. There 
was a rain-storm this morning, but it soon passed away. 
This is our fifth day out, but the sea has been re- 
markably smooth ; I have never seen it equally gra- 
cious, either on the Pacific or the Atlantic. We have 
not had enough motion to disturb the weakest stomach, 
and I shall always remember the Indian ocean with 
gratitude. The weather has been hot, but usually we 
can find enough breeze to be comfortable. A good 
many slept on deck last night, finding their cabins 
stuffy. . . . The leader of the band and orchestra 
is a waiter in the dining-room. I cannot understand 
why a man able to lead a very good orchestra with a 
violin, and a very good band with a cornet, is compelled 
to work as a waiter. The bass player in both organ- 
izations is our table steward, and he is very capable, 
although he cannot speak a word of English. . . . 
There are eight at our table. One was born in France, 
one in Alsace-Lorraine, one in Scotland, one in England, 
one in Wales, one in Spain, and two in America. One 
of the ladies traveled three years in India and two in 
Australia, with a circus owned by her husband, and 
did a riding act. She is now a widow, and conducts 
a riding-school in Johannesburg. One of the men is 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 379 

a Johannesburg electrical engineer, on his way to 
America to study late developments in the science. 
Another is Sammy Marks, a theatrical manager, who 
will shortly open a new theatre at Nairobi, British East 
Africa. This town is 350 miles inland from Mom- 
basa, and on the way there he will pass by rail through 
as good a game country as there is in Africa. His 
wife looks and talks like an American girl, and, being 
accused of it by me, replied that she was glad of it. 
She was born in Paris, but has lived in Africa since she 
was a little girl. Still another man at our table is the 
Frenchman before referred to, one of the politest and 
oddest characters I have ever known. He is an auto- 
mobile agent, and told me that on his present trip he 
sold eighty-five machines in Africa. He doesn't like 
the Germans on the ship, and makes them all the 
trouble he possibly can. One day at dinner he ordered 
fish, and six different kinds of meat, which he nibbled 
at, and sent away. He always drinks two kinds of 
wine at dinner, and sometimes three. He keeps the 
waiter so busy that the others at the table complain 
of neglect. The food on the ''Burgermeister" is sur- 
prisingly good and abundant. ... I suppose there was 
never a chief steward on an ocean-going vessel who was 
not a mean man. He it is who must say "no" when 
passengers become unreasonable. When a woman com- 
plains to a retail grocer of one of his clerks, the grocer 
sides with the woman, but at heart he believes the clerk 
was right. It is the same way when a passenger com- 
plains to the captain of the chief steward : the captain 
is sympathetic, but believes the steward is right. Our 
chief steward is a big, good-natured man, and while 



380 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

we are all in league against him, we are disposed to like 
him. The captain is not only the youngest man I have 
ever seen in command of a ship, but the best-looking. 
The chief officer is not over thirty years old. All the 
members of the crew are young, and speak enough 
English to "get along" after a fashion with the Eng- 
lish passengers. One woman ordered a cup of tea, and 
the waiter brought her two bottles of whisky, opened. 
Another woman ordered a plate of crackers, and the 
waiter brought her a whisky and soda. These are 
cases you hear of; I have had no trouble, and con- 
gratulate myself that I chose a German ship instead 
of an English one. There is a quiet gentility about the 
passengers I greatly admire. I heard before coming 
on board that there would be no English-speaking 
passengers. Nearly all of them speak English, and the 
bill of fare is printed in English, as well as in German. 
The African trip is not an advisable one, owing to the 
great distances, but anyone who makes it in spite of 
my advice to the contrary, should go home by the East 
Coast in a German boat. . . . There are a large 
number of young men on board, and all of them well- 
behaved. There are only two girls on board, and only 
ten women altogether. The orchestra plays every 
night, and there is usually dancing; the five dancing 
women receive a lot of attention. . . . The feel- 
ing between the English and Germans is more intense 
than I expected to find it. When an Enghshman asked 
me what would be the attitude of the United States 
in case of war between Germany and England, I was 
amused, but since then a dozen have asked me the same 
question. They all seem to think the United States 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 381 

should assist the EngHsh. On one of the ships of the 
German East Africa Hne, a few weeks ago, there was 
an incident which might have precipitated the long- 
talked of war between Germany and England. Among 
the passengers were several Englishmen ; one of them 
with a title. On this line it is a habit among the women 
to drink coffee after dinner in the smoking-room. The 
Englishmen did something that was considered offen- 
sive by the German women, and, the captain hearing 
of it, he promptly called the Englishmen to account. 
The Englishmen were furious ; particularly the one 
with a title. He said the women had no business in 
the smoking-room ; that he had done nothing offensive, 
and would not be corrected by anyone, captain or no 
captain. The captain also had a temper, and he re- 
plied that if a titled Englishman didn't know the ordi- 
nary rules of politeness, he would teach him. The two 
men glared at each other a few moments, and the inci- 
dent was closed, but it might easily have resulted in 
serious trouble ; if the captain had put Sir Thomas in 
irons, an international complication might have arisen 
speedily. The Germans have hasty tempers, and are 
slow to apologize ; the same thing may be said of the 
English, and both have a very good opinion of their 
fighting ability ; with Germany rather in the lead in 
conceit, since the Boer war. . . . This morning 
the band played a selection which closed with "God 
Save the King." Two Englishmen who sat near me, 
arose to their feet, and stood until the hymn was fin- 
ished. Yesterday the band played "The Watch on the 
Rhine," but the Germans paid no attention to it ; they 
did not even applaud. Last night the band played 



382 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

"The American Patrol," closing with "The Star- 
Spangled Banner/' but the two Americans on board 
paid the air no special attention. ... A printed 
notice was placed on the bulletin board this afternoon, 
stating that Law mass will be celebrated in the ladies' 
parlor next Sunday, at 10 : 30 a. m. There was great 
curiosity to know the meaning of Law mass. Being 
a printer, and accustomed to the mistakes of printers, 
I was able to solve the riddle : the printer should have 
set up the word "low" instead of "law." The mys- 
tery was nothing more than a typographical error. 
. . . There is a bride and groom on board, and-'the 
fact that one or the other is sulking most of the time 
"has attracted a good deal of attention. . . . One pas- 
senger has attracted everyone's admiration because 
he is a fine walker. Most people walk in a very awk- 
ward manner, but this man, a Portuguese count, walks 
with so much grace as to attract compliments. . . . 
At 9 o'clock tonight we came to Zanzibar, and were 
at once surrounded by the usual crowd of screaming 
boatmen. Near us was anchored the steamer for 
Bombay, and the Hindu deck passengers packed up 
and departed. I shall miss them every morning when 
I look out of my window; they came to know me, I 
was so close a neighbor. The Hindu juggler was my 
favorite : he had a far-away look that would have be- 
come a mystic. The big negro Mohammedan who took 
so much pride in his prayers also stood high in my esti- 
mation, as he was a very dignified and quiet man. I 
went down to the gang-plank, and said good-by to 
these two as they disembarked carrying their pans and 
pots, and boxes and bundles. . . . Some of the 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA, 383 

passengers went ashore, but I remained and listened 
to the band concert, and watched the unusual scene 
of activity about the ship. The men engaged in un- 
loading are mainly Mohammedan negroes, and they 
make more noise and do less work than any other 
workmen I know anything about. They not only 
scream all the time, but keep up a sort of song. At 
intervals they all quit the work on which they are en- 
gaged and clap their hands in unison. 



Saturday, April 12. — Zanzibar is unusual in many 
ways, but not as unusual as I expected it to be. I 
measured several of its streets this morning, and found 
them nine feet wide. These were mainly residence 
streets ; the principal business streets are a little wider, 
and automobiles run in them. I met a gentleman 
named Hay in Zanzibar, an official of the cable com- 
pany, and called at his home several times. He lives 
in the queerest house I have ever seen. It fronts on 
the sea, and was built and occupied many years by an 
Arab gentleman. The house is enormous in size, and 
some of its rooms must be thirty or forty feet square ; 
it amused me immensely to see a dining-table, set for 
two, in the centre of the enormous dining-room ; Mr. 
Hay has no children, and he and his wife are the sole 
occupants of the big house, except that four native 
servants slip about as quietly as mice. In the centre 
of the house is an enormous court, open to the sun- 
light, and when I visited the place we used to run across 
this, to avoid sunstroke. The bath-room of the house 



384 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

is another large room, with a depression and drain in 
the cement floor ; every floor in the house is of cement 
and the wafls of rough stucco plastered outside and 
inside. The water for bathing is carried to the Hay 
home by negro women, and for this service they re- 
ceive three shillings a month, or seventy-two cents. 
The women carry the water on their heads, in Stand- 
ard Oil tins, and have the best figures in the world, 
because of their habit of carrying loads on their heads. 
In the Hay house, as in all the other homes in Zanzibar, 
there is a roof garden, where the dwellers go when the 
nights are excessively hot. The Hay servants re- 
ceive $1.25 a month, and board themselves. Mr. Hay 
told me they were great thieves ; most of the other 
white people I met in Africa spoke highly of the hon- 
. esty of the blacks. The approach to the house is a 
crooked street nine feet wide, and the front door an 
elaborate affair of bronze. An Arab invests a great 
deal of his money in his front door, as river pilots are 
said to invest most of their money in watch chains. 
This queer, rambling house rents for $20 a month. 
While sitting on its veranda, looking out to sea, a war- 
ship lying only a few hundred yards away fired a salute 
of a dozen guns, and caused Adelaide to scream, as 
the guns were pointed directly at us. . . . Mr. 
Hay has Uved on the edge of the east fifteen or twenty 
years, as an employee of the cable company, and says 
that in his bachelor days he never shaved or put on 
socks except when a ship was expected in the harbor. 
The arrival of a ship in these far-away places is a big 
event to the white residents, as they nearly always 
dine aboard, and hear gossip from home. , , , 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 385 

Zanzibar, the town, is not as large as I expected to find 
it. I don't know how many blacks are scattered over 
Zanzibar island, which is 50 miles long and 25 broad, 
but the total white population amounts to less than one 
hundred and fifty. Of white women and girls, there 
are only fifteen; and all of them smoke cigarettes, 
one citizen told me. When I meet a woman over here 
who smokes cigarettes, I am usually told that her hus- 
band is coaxing her to quit the habit. While in Zan- 
zibar, the subject of women smoking cigarettes came 
up, and several men said to me: "My sisters never 
smoke; they would as soon think of cutting their 
throats." I have rarely known a woman cigarette- 
smoker who did not tell me that her husband objected. 
Nice women smoke, but they would be nicer if they 
didn't. Cigarette-smoking in women seems to be 
associated more or less with drinking : I sat in a party 
one night, at one of our stopping-places, and one 
woman drank five high-balls, in addition to smoking 
nearly a box of cigarettes. . . . There is one nar- 
row, crooked street in Zanzibar which is occupied en- 
tirely by Hindus. The street is so narrow that a car- 
riage cannot be driven through it, and the shops of 
the tradesmen are very small; a merchant may sit 
in the middle of his shop, and reach everything it con- 
tains. Many of the occupants of the street are jew- 
elers, and manufacture very wonderful articles with 
very simple tools. Leading off the street referred to 
are other narrow streets, and there is nothing more 
curious in Cairo or Delhi. Prices are actually very 
high in Zanzibar, unless you haggle with the merchants. 
One woman who was asked $35 for a cat's-eye, finally 



386 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

paid $5 for it; another was asked $7.50 for an opal, 
and got it for $1.25. A professional horse-trader might 
do well as a shopper in Zanzibar, but the ordinary trav- 
eler is robbed. In San Francisco are curio stores dis- 
playing eastern goods five times larger than any simi- 
lar, store in Zanzibar. And in San Francisco the one- 
price system prevails. There are still larger stores in 
New York for the sale of curious things of Japanese, 
Indian or Chinese manufacture, and the merchants 
are reliable, whereas if you attempt to buy anything 
in Zanzibar, you usually deal with a rogue. ... I 
had an automobile ride in Zanzibar I shall always re- 
member. We drove across the island, a distance of 
twenty-four miles, and were almost constantly passing 
through native villages. The natives of Zanzibar seem 
to be more prosperous than the other negroes we have 
seen, and they have adopted all the customs of the 
strange races they meet here. Everywhere we saw 
negro women hiding their faces behind veils, a custom 
learned from the Hindus. We also saw negro women 
with gold buttons in their noses, rings on their toes, 
and bracelets on their ankles ; they had seen these 
customs practiced by other women, and adopted them, 
without any particular reason. ... I believe I 
saw more cocoanut trees on Zanzibar island than I ever 
before saw anywhere ; and everywhere the people were 
preparing copra, the dried meat of the cocoanut. 
Copra produces an oil used in soap-making, and is in 
brisk demand. Wherever we go here we get the dis- 
agreeable smell of copra ; it reminds one of very rancid 
butter. . . . We also passed through many miles 
of clove trees. Ninety per cent of all the cloves pro- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 387 

duced in the world are raised on Zanzibar island, where 
conditions are just right. Cloves are widely used in 
the manufacture of perfumes ; in nearly every per- 
fume is a little of the oil of clove. The clove trees are 
eighteen to twenty-five feet high, and do not look un- 
like orange trees. The crop is gathered by native 
women and children, and finds its way to every por- 
tion of the world. The island of Zanzibar is not un- 
like the island of Ceylon, of which it reminded me. 
Rice is extensively grown, and the banana and mango 
flourish, as do mosquitoes, malaria, donkeys, goats, 
and the inclination to go naked all the year 'round. 
Returning from the automobile trip, we were late, and 
the driver, a Hindu, tore like mad through the streets 
of the native villages. We lit our lamps at a native 
village, and entered Zanzibar after nightfall. Riding 
through the narrow streets of this old town after night, 
in an automobile, was an experience I shall always re- 
member, for Zanzibar reminds every visitor of the towns 
described in "The Arabian Nights." It is a typical 
Arabian town, and there seems to be a mystery and a 
romance behind every door. The town was ruled for 
hundreds of years by a Sultan, until the English took 
charge. There is still a sultan, who receives a salary 
from the English government, but some day he will 
be deposed, and there will be no further pretense of a 
Sultan having anything to do with the government. 
The old palace of the Sultan — an ugly affair which 
looks like a boarding-house — is used for offices by the 
British. Near the palace is the harem, now deserted, 
since the present Sultan has but one wife. The Sultan 
who had trouble with the English was educated in 



388 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

England, and spent much of his time, and all of his 
revenues, in Paris. One day an English gunboat sailed 
into the harbor, and the captain told the gay Sultan 
that he had been ousted. The Sultan resented the 
high-handed proceeding, and sent word to the defend- 
ers of his dignity to sink the English gunboat and put 
the insolent captain in the dungeon. There was an 
old fort near the palace, on the walls of which were 
mounted a few rusty iron cannon. The defenders of 
the Sultan tried to fire these at the English gunboat, 
but they burst, one by one, and almost wiped out the 
Sultan's defensive force. The captain of the English 
gunboat then began dropping shells into the palace, 
and, with one solid shot, sank the Sultan's navy : a 
small vessel which carried four guns. The last rem- 
nants of this wreck were being removed from the har- 
bor the day I was at Zanzibar, . . . Near the 
middle of the town is a place called ''The Gardens." 
It was formerly the bathing resort of the wives of the 
Sultan. The place is now used as a town hall, and I 
went there with Sammy Marks, the theatrical manager, 
who wished to engage it for an attraction. He paid 
twelve shillings for the use of the hall. Dances are 
also held in the hall ; the bathing-pool is covered with 
planks when the hall is rented. On other days, the 
bathing-pool, formerly the resort of the Sultan's wives, 
is used by the school-boys, and scattered around the 
hall" I saw a good many pieces of gymnastic apparatus. 
. . . Our summer weather is never as hot as the 
hot weather of Africa. Whenever we go ashore we 
carry a sunshade, and, with that protection, suffer more 
from heat than we ever suffer 9.t home. . . . After 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 389 

our return from the automobile trip, Mr. and Mrs. 
Hay were our guests for dinner on the ship. They re- 
mained until nearly midnight, listening to the band 
concert, and ''visiting." Their boatman was anxious 
to go ashore, but Mr. Hay dared him to ; there is a 
law here that a native boatman who takes a passenger 
out to a ship, must wait until the passenger is ready 
to return. . . . This afternoon we drank tea with 
an English official on the other side of the island. The 
official invited in several other Englishmen and their 
wives. The Englishmen were very polite, but I have 
never felt more uncomfortable in my life. I didn't 
know when we started on the automobile ride that there 
was to be a function ; it was arranged as an agreeable 
surprise by Mrs. Hay. I am sure the polite English- 
men enjoyed the parting as much as we did. . . . 
Dozens of native guides came on board last night and 
this morning, offering their services. Most of them had 
big names ; one called himself George Washington, 
another Abraham Lincoln, another Oliver Cromwell, 
etc. But one quiet, modest negro said to the passen- 
gers : 

"Me Poor Charley." 

And Poor Charley was a favorite; everyone who 
needed a guide tried to engage him. 



Sunday, April 13. — England and Germany are not 
far apart in East Africa. We left Zanzibar, which 
is in British territory, at 5 a. m. this morning. Four 
hours later we were in Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of 



390 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

German East Africa. I shall remember this place 
particularly because the ship entered its harbor through 
an entrance which did not seem to be more than two 
hundred feet wide in one place, and because of the great 
number of Germans who came aboard, and remained 
all day, and nearly all night, drinking beer and singing 
songs. Most of our German visitors wore uniforms; 
Germany uses more uniforms than any other country 
in the world, population considered. We went ashore 
at 9 A. M., and found a very pretty modern town with 
the usual fifty blacks to one white. There is a hotel 
at this place which is considered a wonder, and a good 
many of the passengers went there for lunch or dinner. 
. . . All the time we were walking about, black 
ricksha boys followed us, and finally they proved a 
blessing when a rain came up ; we entered the vehicles, 
and went to the hotel, where we found a lot of our pas- 
sengers drinking beer on the verandas. . . . Cocoa- 
nut trees grow in great profusion here, and on one I 
counted fifty-four nuts. I have always had a notion 
that four or five nuts is a pretty good average for a 
cocoanut tree. 



Monday, April 14. — We have been in three differ- 
ent towns today : Dar-es-Salaam, Zanzibar, and Tanga. 
We left Dar-es-Salaam at daylight, and stopped at 
Zanzibar for the mails at about 10 a. m., remaining an 
hour. Several of our friends came on board, but none 
of the passengers went ashore. Dozens of Indian mer- 
chants came out to the ship, and worked rapidly, as 
they expected the whistle to blow any moment. The 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 391 

passengers also shopped rapidly, having heard that 
goods might be had at low prices during this brief 
shopping period. Hundreds of purchases, mostly of 
useless trifles, were made. Most travelers are as par- 
ticular to buy presents for all their friends as they are 
to remember them at Christmas-time. When the 
whistle finally blew, there was a scramble of merchants 
and their assistants to get into the little boats, and one 
man was compelled to jump and swim for it. Many 
of the passengers ordered clothing of the Zanzibar 
tailors, on Saturday, which was delivered today. A 
pants and coat of white duck, so generally worn here, 
cost $2.50 for the best quality, and as low as SI. 75 a 
suit for lighter material. The ladies also ordered 
skirts, and the charge was $2.25. . . . At 11 a. m. 
we left Zanzibar, and six hours later were at Tanga, 
also in German East Africa. We have made very 
little progress in the last three days, our time being 
devoted to loading freight. But I think we took on 
most of all at Tanga. All through the night the steam 
winches were going, and they did not cease work until 
after breakfast. One gang of men slept while the 
other worked. The forward winches are not many 
feet from my cabin window, and all through the night 
there was a tremendous racket, but, greatly to my sur- 
prise, I slept fairly well. . . . The usual uni- 
formed Germans came on board at Tanga, and visited 
our officers. At Dar-es-Salaam and Tanga every va- 
cant berth on the ship was filled with a German, and 
several are sleeping in the music-room. Five of the 
new passengers are babies, and several of the others 
are Kaffir nurses. One of these nurses is a man with 



392 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

whiskers, and certainly six feet high. To see him car- 
ing for a baby is very amusing. Still another new pas- 
senger is a Kaffir girl, a nurse, but she is so scantily 
dressed that she has been refused the run of the upper 
decks. ... A young German girl left the ship at 
Tanga, and we hear she is engaged to the ship doctor. 
Their love affair has been the subject of much gossip, 
and when the girl left for shore in a small boat she 
wept bitterly. Bets of two to one are freely offered 
that the engagement will not result in marriage. . . . 
There is general relief because a young bull, which has 
been on board ever since we left Beira, departed on a 
scow at Tanga, after being lifted over the sides by the 
steam winches. The bull seemed to understand that 
he was about to get rid of his long confinement in a 
narrow box, and behaved very decently while being 
unloaded. . . . The trip up the east coast of Af- 
rica is distinguished because of its many stops, but 
this makes it a long trip. We are becoming tired, and 
did not go ashore at Tanga. 



Tuesday, April 15. — There must be a tremendous 
amount of cargo on this boat. We ceased loading at 
Tanga at 9 o'clock this morning, and at 5 p. M. began 
again at Mombasa. At 5 : 15 we went down the stair- 
way at the side of the ship, and a fight began among the 
boatmen over our patronage. The negro crew of row- 
boat No. 5 won, and we went ashore, stopping on the 
way at the "Adolph Woerner," lying in the harbor. 
Landing, we walked a block to the street railway, which 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 393 

is one of the queer affairs called a "trolley" over here, 
although there is no trolley. The street railway runs 
from the port, called Kilhndini, to Mombasa, a mile 
and a half away, and only handcars, pushed by native 
men, are operated. There is a double track, with 
branches to every important section of Mombasa. Ev- 
ery citizen of importance owns one or more handcars, 
called "trolleys," and these are lifted off the track 
when not in use, and you see them standing every- 
where about the town. The fare up-town by trolley is 
not five cents, as is the case in the United States, where 
the people are mercilessly robbed by the corporations ; 
the fare is forty-eight cents per passenger, after 6 p. m., 
and twenty-four cents during the day. Three men 
pushed our trolley, and, when they came to a piece of 
down-hill track, they all rode. We had employed a 
black boy as guide at the landing, at thirty-six cents 
an hour, and when we struck an up-hill piece of track, 
the guide also helped push. Thus with four men we 
got along very well, and were soon in the heart of old 
Mombasa, said to have been besieged oftener than any 
other town in the world ; which is a pretty good story, 
if true, for there is fairly accurate authority for the 
statement that Jerusalem has been besieged and taken 
fifty times. . . . The trolley system of Mombasa 
stops at the postoffice ; we left our car there, and walked 
into the old part of the town. In Zanzibar the streets 
were crooked, but in the old section of Mombasa the 
buildings seem to have been built without any order 
whatever. There are no streets ; only spaces between 
the buildings, and these are very narrow. The inhab- 
itants of the section through which we passed at about 



394 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

6 P. M. are mainly people from India, and thousands of 
children were playing about the narrow passages, or 
in the quaint shops, which were almost as small as 
shops set up by children at play. It was almost dark, 
and the usual illumination in the average shop was a 
lantern. The shopkeepers wore turbans, and all sorts 
of strange clothing, and there was a touch of every 
country except the country I am most familiar with. 
I could not have named one-tenth of the articles dis- 
played in the shops, and in one place a phonograph 
was playing Hindu airs as strange to me as the old 
town of Mombasa. We went to a market where hun- 
dreds of people were quarreling over food prices, and 
where the people seemed to come out of foreign books 
rather than out of real life. Occasionally we came 
"across a wholesale house, and in the offices of these we 
saw Hindus working at typewriters. Drinking-shops 
abounded, and out of these came drunken men who 
leered at us impudently and curiously. There were a 
good many native hotels with guests sitting idly about. 
Mothers ran everywhere hunting their children, and 
the streets, not much wider than our sidewalks, were 
crowded with jabbering, gesticulating men and women 
who seemed to us to be rather ill-natured. . . . We 
passed an old fort which looked as large as Edinburgh 
castle, in Scotland ; Mombasa is a big town, and pros- 
perous, and its institutions are on a large scale. The 
guide said there was a still more interesting fort fifteen 
minutes away, and we went there by trolley. The 
fort is situated on the seashore, and only a ruin, but it 
looked very interesting in the moonlight. The old 
cannon used in defense of the place, I don't know how 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 395 

many centuries ago, were still looking grimly out of 
ruined portholes, and just below the portholes the 
waves were tumbling noisily, as if anxious to cUmb up 
the rocks and complete the ruin of the place. Near 
the old fort was a hghthouse, flashing its signals out to 
sea, and directly in front of the lighthouse was the 
wreck of a steamship. The tide was out, and we went 
on board for a few minutes. There is probably noth- 
ing which so completely depicts ruin and desolation as 
a wrecked ship, lying on its side, and stripped of every- 
thing of value by vandals and the sea. We also climbed 
up to the lighthouse tower, and the keeper showed us 
the mechanism. It was the first lighthouse I have ever 
inspected at close quarters ; usually they are located 
on rocks hard to get to. . . . When we went back 
to town, neither Enghsh nor German money would 
satisfy the trolley-boys, so I went into the shop of a 
money-changer, and paid twelve cents for enough In- 
dian rupees to satisfy my creditors. The three trolley- 
boys who had taken us to the old fort took us to the 
landing, at a breakneck speed. One of the three rode 
all the time, and they relieved each other at the work 
of pushing. When the gTade was down-hill, they all 
rode. Down one long hill we must have traveled at 
the rate of thirty miles an hour. When we left the 
trolle}^, we were seized upon by a boatman who had 
wandered from the landing to get the first chance at 
ship passengers returning from town. 

"Promise me, master," he said; "me No. 67." We 
promised, and followed him to the landing. Other 
boatmen constantly joined our procession, and we were 
soon in the center of a howling, fighting mob, but we 



396 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

had promised No. 67, and were faithful to him. At 
first, he was one to a hundred, but as we neared the 
landing, his three companions came to his assistance, 
and we were finally able to go aboard No. 67. I sat in 
the stern, and handled the tiller-ropes, and the ride out 
to the ship was cool and enjoyable. . . . Arriving 
at the ship, we found it surrounded with freight barges, 
and loading in furious progress. Eight steam winches 
were at work, four forward and four aft, and hundreds 
of screaming natives were swarming over the barges 
and down in the hold where the freight was being 
stored. A man who lives in this part of the world, and 
is familiar with it, says that when the natives are talk- 
ing, they are at work; when they are quiet, he stirs 
them up with a stick, for he knows they are loafing. 
The loading on the forward deck was not ten feet from 
my cabin, and the quartermaster assured me it would 
go on all night. At 10 : 30 there was a short rest, and 
the native workers swarmed up from below, and over 
from the barges, to be fed. The crew cook gave them 
pans of either rice or corn-meal mush, I could not tell 
which, and the men sat around in groups, and ate it 
with their fingers. The deck passengers, who have 
comfortable quarters over the hatchway when we are 
at sea, scatter everywhere when the hatches are un- 
covered, and loading is in progress. ... I was 
much interested in a negro man who had two wives. 
The women had little babies of about the same age, 
and the husband seemed as fond of one wife as of the 
other. The husband was a young man, perhaps twen- 
ty-five, and his wives were still younger. The black 
babies were much better behaved than the white ones 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 397 

in the first cabin. Since the arrival of the five white 
babies, the " Burgermeister " has been turned into a 
nursery. Some mothers are disposed to be apologetic 
when their children annoy others, but the mothers on 
the " Burgermeister " look at the other passengers as 
though they are a mean lot for not assisting in taking 
care of the babies. When a baby cries in my presence, 
I somehow feel as though I made it cry. I learned the 
various processes of caring for babies in bringing up 
my own, but had I not learned the art long ago, I 
might learn it all on board the "Burgermeister," from 
intimate association with it. All the babies are Ger- 
man, except one Portuguese. ... I was more in- 
terested in Mombasa than in Zanzibar. It is larger, 
and has better public buildings of every kind. The 
general impression is that Mombasa has a bright future, 
while Zanzibar seems to be as large as it can ever hope 
to be. . . . The known history of Mombasa be- 
gan a thousand years ago, but many say this section 
was settled, and was the scene of fierce wars, long be- 
fore the Christian era. It has been Portuguese terri- 
tory and Arab territory, and they quarreled and fought 
over it constantly until the British took possession, 
and told both contending factions to behave them- 
selves. If the old forts in Mombasa could talk, they 
might tell tales of bloodshed and cruelty that would 
startle modern mankind. . . . Mombasa is the 
port of entry for the vast territory of Uganda, a name 
which calls up memories of Livingstone, Speke, Grant, 
and Stanley. The railroad beginning here runs to 
Victoria Lake. It was this railroad on which Roose- 
velt made his trip into the interior, riding on the cow- 



398 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

catcher much of the way, and being in constant sight 
of big game. I have seen no wild game except one 
pheasant, , and a good many baboons, but it is all 
around us, a few miles in the interior. . . . Imag- 
inative writers draw beautiful word-pictures of this 
country and its future, but the facts are that it is a 
country beset with many pests and difficulties. I have 
talked with men from many sections of it, but they do 
not tell stories of wonderful prosperity. On the con- 
trary, they tell stories of hot weather, of natural dif- 
ficulties to be overcome, and of hard pioneering. Who- 
ever lives here must not expect health; he must "go 
home" as frequently as possible, to recuperate, as do 
our soldiers in the Philippines. There are as many 
undeveloped "natural resources" in the Philippine 
Islands as in Africa; the greatest difference is that 
the African natives are better workers than the Fili- 
pinos, and not so much attention is paid to their liber- 
ties as we are paying to the liberties of the Filipinos. 
. . . This section is known locally as "British 
East." Some say British East Africa is a better coun- 
try than Cape Colony or Natal, or the Transvaal, or 
the Orange Free State, but the general evidence is that 
it is not. . . . The " Burgermeister " has a won- 
derful cargo in its hold. This morning I saw a lot of 
ivory come on board, and asked an official what else 
we carried to the markets of the world. We have rub- 
ber, cloves, Colombo roots, ginelda wood for tanning, 
crome ore, a great lot of copper ore, gum copal, copra, 
cocoanut fiber, carianda seeds, great quantities of bul- 
lock and goat hides, ostrich feathers, wool, raw cotton, 
coffee, tobacco, cotton seed, cotton-seed oil in barrels, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 399 

etc. A great deal more freight was offered than the 
ship could accommodate, and much was left in the 
barges after the " Burgermeister's " hold was full. This 
freight comes from the interior, and was brought to 
the coast by rail, by river, and by bullock team; it 
does not represent the product of a section, but of a 
continent. . . . We were told on coming on board 
last night that an American and his wife had been 
added to the passenger list during our absence. I 
looked the man over, and at once offered to bet two 
to one that he was not an American. He wore a green 
hat, with the brim turned down all the way 'round. 
No American ever wore a green hat, or wore it with 
the brim turned down in that fashion. Besides, he 
smokes a pipe all the time, and carries a bag of tobacco 
attached to his belt ; an English custom. . . . We 
lost nearly all of our friends at Mombasa. Many of 
the passengers are new, and we must start all over in 
becoming acquainted. Nine out of ten are Germans; 
there is an English line of boats plying on the East 
Coast, and the English prefer their own ships. Who- 
ever travels out here will notice friction between the 
English and Germans. ... In spite of every cabin 
on the ship being full, and in spite of the long delays 
in loading freight, the chief steward feeds us well ; it 
is not too much to say that the food is as good as may 
be had on the best ships of the fine Atlantic fleet. 
While in port, we have so many visitors that we are 
crowded, but at sea, we settle down, and do very well. 
. . . There are several cases of the plague at Mom- 
basa, but not much attention is paid to them. The 
plague is always a pest here, and occasionally it gets 



400 TBAVEL LETTERS FROM 

a big start ; not long ago, Zanzibar was a closed port 
for six months, and visitors were compelled to remain 
there until, the quarantine was raised. The Zanzibar 
hotel is a very bad one, and a good many of the vis- 
itors hired houses and cooks, and lived very comforta- 
bly. . . . Nearly all the natives of Mombasa are 
Mohammedans, and when we passed through the town 
just after darkness set in, it seems to me I saw thou- 
sands of men praying in the mosques. I have never 
seen a Mohammedan woman praying ; with people of 
that faith, it seems to be the men who are religious. 
Among Protestants, you will find ten religious women 
to one religious man. . . . The old fort at Mom- 
basa was once besieged thirty-three months, and when 
the garrison finally surrendered the victors found only 
^ eleven men and three women to butcher. . . . The 
Uganda State Railway begins at Mombasa, and runs 
to Lake Victoria, source of the river Nile. On the 
way is Niarobi, probably the most promising town in 
British East Africa. It was to Niarobi Sammy Marks 
was going, to open a new theatre. Nearly all the way 
to the lake, big game is constantly in sight from the 
railway carriages. Lake Victoria is the second largest 
in the world, only Lake Superior being larger. A trip 
of five days is provided on Victoria Lake, in large and 
comfortable ships, which are occasionally out of sight 
of land. It is in this section where ten thousand na- 
tives died within a year from the terrible sleeping sick- 
ness, which is so fatal that the government is now 
forcing the blacks to leave the infected district. . . . 
On the railroad to Victoria Lake is Tsavo station, where 
a pair of man-eating lions devoured thirty-three natives 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 401 

during the construction work. Colonel Patterson 
wrote a book about "The Man Eaters of Tsavo," and 
its fame is worldwide. The terror of the native 
workmen on the railway finally became so great that 
work was suspended for a time. Then one of the en- 
gineers fixed up an iron cage, and spent five nights in 
it. The second night he shot one of the lions, another 
the third night, and the last one the fifth night. A 
good many hunters in Africa laugh at the Tsavo story 
as greatly exaggerated ; indeed, I have heard it openly 
stated here that the Lion Lie is one of the greatest 
jokes in Africa. Every hunter, the African people say, 
takes home a fierce lion lie, and the world has come to 
believe thousands of big stories about these animals 
that are ridiculous. 



Wednesday, April 16. — At noon today we left 
Mombasa for Aden ; no more stops for five or six 
days. Loading at Mombasa continued without in- 
terruption for eighteen hours, and when the colored 
laborers went away on barges, they cheered because 
of the completion of their long task. . . . Outside 
the harbor, we encountered the first motion of the voy- 
age, and several of the passengers went to bed. The 
motion was not great, but it was the first we have had. 
We had been wondering what the " Burgermeister " 
would do in case of heavy weather, and found her 
specialty is a pitch. The pitch is far more agreeable 
than the roll. . . . We had been told by the cap- 
tain to expect the hottest weather of the voyage be- 



402 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

tween Mombasa and Aden, but found the weather 
cooler at Mombasa than at any other stopping-place, 
and at sea there were actually spots on deck that were 
too cool. ... At Mombasa we took on an en- 
tirely new lot of deck passengers, and lost a number 
who greatly interested me. One was a negro boy of 
fourteen, whom a woman passenger was taking to 
Niarobi as a servant. She met him on the streets of 
Mozambique, and, being attracted by his fair promises, 
took him on board. The boy claimed to be able to 
speak five languages in addition to ''Kitchen Kaffir." 
This is a language which all Kaffirs understand, and it 
is the native language usually learned by whites. I 
have a notion that a half-savage boy of fourteen speak- 
ing five languages, speaks some of them very im- 
perfectly. . . . The captain, or some one for him, 
has suppressed the six babies on board. Nearly all 
of them have male nurses, and these negro men, who 
are traveling on deck-passage tickets, almost monop- 
olized the first-cabin deck. They had cribs and fences 
in which they confined their charges, and getting about 
was almost impossible. There was so much grumbling 
that the babies and nurses have been sent to the deck 
below, and we see no more of them, although we can 
hear them. The halls of the baby deck are encumbered 
with all sorts of nursing-bottles and other apparatus 
of that nature, and we are compelled to wade through 
it when we go to our rooms. . . . The lower class 
of Hindus are the filthiest people in the world, judging 
from what I see of them on the lower deck, where a 
good many of them are located as passengers. I can- 
not avoid seeing all their domestic arrangements, and 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 403 

their indifference to dirt is amazing. I notice that a 
good many of the negroes in Africa have adopted the 
Hindu rehgion, having learned it from the Indians, who 
come to the East Coast in great swarms. Rehgion 
naturally appeals to the negro, and he adopts any form 
of it which attracts his fancy. But the great bulk of 
the negroes on the East Coast are Mohammedans, hav- 
ing learned that doctrine from the Arabs who sold them 
into slavery. You would think the negroes would de- 
test the Mohammedan religion and the Arabs, but they 
do not. Many of the natives who are unmistakably 
Africans, claim to be Arabs, and this evening I saw six 
Mohammedan negroes saying their prayers at the same 
time. They observed me watching them, and took 
particular pains to "show off." One of them had a 
string of beads of the kind used by the Catholics, and 
I am certain that he had picked up this addition to his 
Mohammedan religion from the Catholics. All re- 
Hgions become badly mixed by their different forms 
appealing to other sects. . . . The orchestra played 
a concert on deck this evening, for the first time in 
several days ; we have been so busy loading cargo that 
there was no time to think of music. ... I find that 
we took on an American passenger at Mombasa ; 
A. B. Hepburn, of the Chase National Bank, of New 
York, and Comptroller of Currency under President 
Harrison. He has been hunting in the Niarobi sec- 
tion, and told me he was the only one in his outfit who 
did not get the fever. 



404 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Thursday, April 17. — We crossed the equator at 
noon today, and are once more in our proper hemi- 
sphere. There were no exercises ; usually the sailors 
engage in fooHshness, and scare those who have not 
crossed before, by threatening to duck them in the 
swimming-tank. There is not a great deal of foohsh- 
ness on German ships ; on the English ships, so much 
is made of sports that many passengers seriously ob- 
ject. I selected a German ship instead of an English 
because I was thoroughly disgusted with the Sports 
Committee on the "Anchises." Every hour of the 
day, almost, on the "Anchises," a boy went about 
beating a gong, to announce another meeting of the 
Sports Committee, which arranged for potato races, 
.sack races, and other silly performances. Nothing of 
that kind on the "Burgermeister ;" the passengers are 
genteel and quiet, and let each other alone. . . . 
The English universally speak of the tomato as "to- 
mahto." If that pronunciation is correct, why do they 
speak of the potato as "potajd^o?" If "tomahto" 
is a correct pronunciation, "potahto" is also better 
than "potayto." ... I notice that nearly everyone 
speaks a little English. We have on board Germans, 
Russians, Portuguese, Chinese, Belgians, French, Arabs, 
Hindus, and Kaffirs, and all of them speak Enghsh, 
more or less. English will soon become the universal 
language ; there is no need of Esperanto, a language I 
have never heard of anyone speaking. A band of re- 
formers are urging that all races learn Esperanto, in 
order that all men may have a common language, but 
Esperanto is not making much progress. . . . Owing 
to the crowd in the dining-room, my bath-room stew- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 405 

ard assists in waiting at my table. He is a very capa- 
ble and agreeable man; every morning when I go to 
the bath-room, he says: "Good morning, please." 
. . . I believe that every woman on board, with one 
notable exception from Kansas, smokes cigarettes. 
Young women walk about the decks alone, smoking, 
and it always seems to me to be foolish. The fact that 
Adelaide does not smoke, causes a good deal of favor- 
able comment among the men. "I may be old-fash- 
ioned," I have heard many men say, "but I don't like 
to see women smoke." . . . We have heard no 
American news for weeks, except that J. Pierpont Mor- 
gan's body has arrived in New York. I see this an- 
nouncement in every newspaper I pick up; when a 
cablegram is received here, the newspapers warm it 
over for days. ... In the cablegram announcing 
Morgan's death, the impression was given that he had 
a bad stomach, and starved to death. The passengers 
talk a good deal about this very rich man starving to 
death. . . . An Englishman whom I know very 
well, and who talks Kaffir, takes a good deal of inter- 
est in the negro passenger who has two wives. Today 
we went down to the lower deck, and discussed matri- 
mony with the man. Asked if the system of plural 
marriages pleased him, he replied that if he had it 
to do over, he wouldn't marry at all. It seems that 
all the Kaffirs who are deck passengers try to flirt with 
the man's two wives, and he is very uncomfortable. 
He says he showed his respect for women in a practical 
way, by marrying two of them ; that he pays their 
fare on the present journey, but that a lot of young 
fellows expect his wives to neglect him in order that 



TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 



they may amuse them. There is a good deal of the 
same thing in the first cabin, and several wives make 
their husbands very uncomfortable by flirting with 
the young men. . . . The barber on this ship 
charges only twelve cents for a shave ; the price on all 
other ships I know anything about is double that 
amount. . . . The Germans and English have 
talked of fighting so long that I almost hope they will 
finally be punished by getting at it. War is so un- 
necessary, atrocious and wicked that every nation that 
even talks about it should be punished. . . . This 
morning we passed an Arab dhow. It was not more 
than sixty feet long, yet vessels of this type have been 
sailing these seas for centuries. They have but one 
sail, and a crew of only four or five men, but they are 
often entrusted with valuable cargoes. They are 
stoutly but crudely built, and the one deck is covered 
with straw thatch. The captain of an Arab dhow 
has no scientific knowledge of navigation, and no in- 
struments to take the sun, yet he knows the currents 
and the stars, and makes as good time as modern sail- 
ing-ships. Captain Ulrich looked at the dhow through 
his glass this morning, and said the captain was taking 
every advantage of wind and current, and that the 
most able navigator could not do better. Ships of 
exactly this type were used thousands of years ago, 
and some I have seen along this coast looked to be 
fully that old. An Arab dhow has no conveniences 
whatever, yet they carry passengers as well as freight. 
Passengers and crew live together under the single 
roof of thatch, and cook and live in the most primitive 
manner. If the Arabs are not the dirtiest people in 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 407 

the world, only the lower order of Hindus can wrest 
that distinction from them. . . . Many of the pas- 
sengers who came on board at German East Africa 
ports, are half sick, and say they have had enough 
of the African climate. I hear no praise of rural Africa 
from those who have lived there ; there are prosperous 
and healthy people around Capetown and Durban, and 
in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, but the in- 
terior of the country is grievously afflicted with dry 
weather and serious physical pests. 



Friday, April 18. — We have not been in sight of 
land for several days, but the sea remains calm, and 
the weather cool ; nothing going on except the band 
concert at 10 : 30 a. m., and the orchestra concert at 
9 p. M. After the last-named event, we walk around 
awhile, and then go to bed. . . . There are two 
amateurs on board who are returning from a hunting 
trip, and on the aft deck they have a number of trophies. 
A majority of the male passengers live in Africa, and 
have hunted a great deal, so the two amateurs do not 
attract much attention. Leopards are the great pest 
of the country, as they are very numerous. One man 
told me this morning that only a few weeks ago, a 
leopard killed a negro boy in his hunting camp. No 
hunting story is more than haK true, so I do not pay 
much attention to them. A hunter offered me a pair 
of buffalo horns today, but I refused the offer ; they 
were not worth the trouble of carrying them home. 
. . . Captain Ulrich, of the ''Burgermeister," does 



408 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

not sit at the head of the centre table in the dining- 
room, but occupies a side seat at a side table. . . . 
Men object to wearing evening clothes because of the 
stiff shirt. Soft shirts with pleated fronts are generally 
worn with dress suits on the "Burgermeister," and they 
are said to be the latest in London. A coat and vest 
of white duck, the coat as short as a waiter's jacket, 
are also substituted for the black coat and vest. . . . 
Every little while I meet a man who says he prefers 
second class to first class on a ship, because of the lack 
of formality in the second cabin. At Victoria Falls I 
became acquainted with a man, and saw him again 
today on the second-cabin deck. He says the in- 
formality there is so pronounced that some of the Eng- 
lishmen spend half the morning in the smoking-room 
wearing nothing but pajamas. That, it seems to me, 
is carrying informality too far. When a man travels 
in the second cabin, he does it to save money, and not 
because it is "more democratic." I hate democracy 
when it amounts to impohteness and rudeness, as is 
frequently the case. . . . There is a burly Ger- 
man officer on board in whom I am much interested, 
because of the scars on his head and face. The scars 
were evidently received in a student duel at the univer- 
sity, and I should like to see the bully boy who deco- 
rated him so artistically. ... I hear it stated every 
hour of the day that Africa is a country of "great 
promise." It seems to me that Africa has been " prom- 
ising" long enough, and should cease being a game 
country. The United States turned the buffalo ranges 
into farms; Africa would also get rid of its game if 
there were any demand for its land from agriculturists. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA, 409 

Saturday, April 19. — Today we are off Samoliland, 
the most worthless part of Africa. It is controlled by 
the Italians, and is about as savage as it ever was. 
There is one seaport in Samoliland, but steamers rarely 
touch there, as it has no business. . . . The weather, 
which we expected to be very hot in this part of the 
world, remains cool. You often miss it when you ex- 
pect misfortune. . . . There is a young Canadian 
on board named Goult. It was at first reported that 
he was an American, and he does look like one, as all 
Canadians do. He and his wife have been on a hunt- 
ing trip into the interior of Africa. They had an out- 
fit consisting of one hundred and fifty native men, 
who packed their supplies and tents. The natives car- 
ried their own. food, which consisted of several thousand 
pounds of corn-meal ; in addition to this, they had 
meat when game was killed. The hunt lasted nearly 
four months, and very few of the men deserted. When 
a native porter deserts, he loses all pay coming to him ; 
besides, he is hable to arrest and imprisonment. Mr. 
Goult had a professional guide and hunter with him, 
who organized and managed his outfit. They killed 
four lions, but no elephants, although other game was 
fairly plentiful. Mr. Goult says game animals in this 
section are infested with a tick which renders them 
disgusting at times. Mrs. Goult told me this evening 
that she suffered no hardship; that roughing it in 
Canada is very much rougher. . . . The band on 
the "Burgermeister" is a very good one ; much better 
than is usually found on ships, and the leader has ex- 
cellent taste in choosing his selections. And this man is 
a waiter in the dining-room, and young and good-look- 



410 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

ing. . . . The "Burgermeister" is a slow ship, 
and makes about fifteen miles an hour : only half as 
much as some of the big liners on the Atlantic. The 
Atlantic is the dandy of oceans : no other has equally 
fine ships. But on the fast ships of the Atlantic there 
is a vibration from the engines that is disagreeable. 
The slow ships are much more comfortable than the 
fast ones. And the Atlantic is also the bully of oceans ; 
a voyage without rough weather is rare. If the At- 
lantic were as smooth as the Indian ocean from Beira 
to Aden, people would hear less of seasickness. . . . 
The captain is taking home with him a baby deer that 
certainly does not weigh a pound and a half. It is 
not as big as a rabbit, as it belongs to a family of deer 
noted for diminutive size. The captain amused the 
passengers this evening by feeding his baby with a 
bottle. First the captain smelt of the bottle, to see 
that the milk was not sour. The baby has been ill, 
and the ship doctor has been attending to it. . . . 
By-the-way, the doctor has been behaving very well 
since his sweetheart left the boat at Tanga. The 
women expected him to be gay, but he has been very 
quiet and thoughtful, and the men are proud of him. 
. . . There is nothing lazier or duller than a voyage 
in quiet seas. At one time this afternoon, every pas- 
senger on my side of the deck was asleep. 



Sunday, April 20. — We were awakened this morn- 
ing by the ship's band playing hymns in the halls. 
Soon after I went on deck, land appeared, the first 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 411 

we have seen in four days, and we remained in sight 
of it all da3\ Between us and land a ship was steam- 
ing southward, and a school of porpoises also appeared, 
disturbing the sea for miles. They were as lazy as 
the natives, and jumped in a leisurely, slow way that 
amused us. About noon. Cape Guardafui appeared. 
Guardafui is the most eastern extremity of the African 
continent, and when we rounded it about noon, we were 
in the Arabian sea, and the ship's prow was pointing 
toward home : due west. The rocky point around 
which we turned to enter the Arabian Sea, bears a 
striking resemblance to a huge crouching lion, when 
viewed from a distance. We passed quite near the 
shore, but saw no signs of hfe : nothing but a desolate 
waste of sand and rock. . . . After rounding 
Guardafui, we were in the Gulf of Aden, which looks 
small on the map, but we shall steam on its surface 
thirty hours, out of sight of land, before reaching Aden 
and the entrance to the Red Sea. We are now in that 
section referred to by Kipling as "East of Suez:" 
land of poor crops, poverty and misery. A few days' 
sail to the east from Guardafui, and the traveler reaches 
India, where ignorance is worshipped as mystery, and 
where men of the tenth or hundredth generation know 
no more than did their fathers. . . . Africa is 
larger than North America ; it is almost as large as the 
American continent, and is controlled by such enlight- 
ened natives as England, Germany, France, Italy, 
Belgium and Portugal, yet from one end of the country 
to the other there is no such thing as a pubUc school 
for the natives. Indeed, I have heard many English- 
men openly declare that education is the ruination of 



412 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

the native. I don't dispute the statement; I only 
call attention to two different ideas of the importance 
of education. In the Philippine Islands, in Guam, 
in Porto Rico, in Honolulu, in Cuba, we are insisting 
upon education as the solution of the native problem ; 
over here, the powers insist that education only makes 
the native problem worse. At home, we are called 
upon to contribute money with which to send mission- 
aries to the heathen. Over here, where the heathen 
lives, the whites almost universally say that the mis- 
sionary causes useless trouble. I am not trying to 
settle the question, or argue it : I am merely calling 
attention to a queer phase of it. . . . A gentleman 
told me today that in Portuguese East Africa, where he 
lives, there is a Catholic mission in charge of French 
priests. In the chapel, there are huge oil paintings 
showing pictures of hell. The devil is represented as 
a negro. In one picture, a native is dying, and hun- 
dreds of fiends surround his bed, waiting until life is 
extinct, that they may torture him. There is educa- 
tion of this sort in Africa, but no school-house for the 
natives. . . . Religious services were held in the 
dining-room at five o'clock this afternoon, conducted 
by a German. The full band was used instead of an 
organ ; the preacher would line a hymn, and then those 
present would sing it, accompanied by the band. . . . 
The ship's library contains books printed in German, 
English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch, which will 
give you an idea of the different nationalities patron- 
izing this line. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 413 

Monday, April 21. — At 9 o'clock this evening we 
came to Aden, in Arabia, said to be the hottest town 
in the world. Every drop of water used there is con- 
densed from the sea, although there is a white popu- 
lation of two thousand, including English soldiers, and 
an Arab population of forty thousand. There is a 
tradition that rain fell at Aden three years ago, and that 
every roof in town leaked, but previous to that time 
no rain had fallen in the town or its vicinity for many 
years ; many of its elderly citizens had never seen a 
rain-storm, and looked with wonder upon the one which 
fell three years ago. Aden is located on a rock seven- 
teen hundred feet high, and this rock may be seen far 
out at sea. The town is an important coaling station, 
and the English have tremendous fortifications — almost 
equal to Gibraltar — in the rocks. The harbor is a large 
one, and almost land-locked, and we thought the place 
a very pretty one, by moonlight. Although Aden has 
such a bad reputation for hot weather, the evening was 
delightfully cool. We were not permitted to land, 
owing to the plague, but our ship was promptly sur- 
rounded by Arabs in boats, who bartered with the pas- 
sengers until after midnight. The Arabs had ostrich 
feathers, cigarettes, post-cards, and dozens of other 
articles to sell, and these they sent up the ship's side 
in baskets, for the inspection of the passengers. If 
the passengers were interested in the goods offered, they 
asked the price, said it was too much, and offered half ; 
then the dealer became excited, and screamed back 
that he wouldn't take it, although he often did. There 
were dozens of these boats, and the uproar was so in- 
cessant that sleep was impossible. The ostrich feathers 



414 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

offered were poor, and those who bought, even at 
greatly reduced prices, were probably worsted. . . . 
The old town of Aden dates back to the days of Tyre 
and Sidon, and was a celebrated commercial centre long 
before our Christian era; for many centuries it has 
been a fortified town because of its strategetical posi- 
tion. From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries 
it did an enormous trade with China, India and Egypt, 
and its market was the clearing-house of that day for 
the treasures of the East. For tens of centuries, Aden 
has been the cockpit of fierce fights for ascendency 
amongst the Arabs, Abyssinians, Persians, Turks, and 
Egyptians. ... A gentleman who lives at Aden 
says he pays $20 a month for water, which is delivered 
at his door in tank-wagons drawn by camels. Some 
of the numerous shops in Aden sell nothing but con- 
densed and bottled water, and the price in quantity 
is usually a dollar per hundred gallons. . . . Many 
years ago, great tanks were built at Aden, to catch 
the precious rainfall, but these have not been in use 
for many years, although tourists usually visit them. 
. . . Aden is a great camel market, and much of 
the famous Mocha coffee is shipped from this point. 
There is just one industry in the town: the manufac- 
ture of cigarettes, which is in the hands of Greeks, and 
who bring their tobacco duty-free from Turkey and 
Egypt. The walls of the houses are built of a cheap 
concrete, and plastered. ... A third-class pas- 
senger on the ''Burgermeister" is a little German girl, 
five years old, traveling alone. She was brought on 
board at Dar-es-Salaam, to be taken back to Germany. 
Her mother died three days before, and her father was 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 415 

somewhere in the interior, trying to make a fortune. 
The Httle girl's mother arrived in Dar-es-Salaam only 
a week before her death. Now the child is very ill, 
and it is not believed she will live to reach her friends 
in Germany. The women passengers are doing all 
they can for the child, but she cries almost constantly 
for her mother, and not much can be done for her. 



Tuesday, April 22. — This morning at 11 o'clock 
we entered the Red Sea, through the Straits of Bab el 
Mandeb. The straits are about ten miles wide, and 
are made narrower at the entrance to the Red Sea by 
Perim Island, which the English have fortified. On 
our right, Asia; on the left, Africa, — two continents 
in sight. The Red Sea is a great highway for ships 
since the completion of the Suez Canal ; ships for India, 
China, Japan, Ceylon, Australia and Africa now pass 
this way. From 7 o'clock this morning until 3 p. m. 
we passed fourteen ships : six were in sight at one time. 
Most of them passed us so closely that we could read 
their names. . . . All over the world, you hear 
how terribly hot and disagreeable a passage through 
the Red Sea is. I have been through it twice, and both 
voyages were cool and pleasant. Ask anyone who has 
been through the Red Sea, and he will tell you he had 
a pleasant voyage, but those who have not made the 
trip, say it is dreadful. If you have a head wind, they 
say, the voyage is endurable, but if you have a follow- 
ing wind, — well, passengers can't stand it, and beg the 
captain to run the other way for a time, and give them 



416 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

some relief. We have a following wind today, — that 
is, the smoke from our funnels is ahead of us, — but we 
find the weather more agreeable than it was at Beira, 
or other points on the east coast of Africa. . . . 
We are rarely out of sight of land, and this afternoon 
we passed the Arabian town of Mokka. We spell it 
Mocha, and famous coffee comes from its vicinity. 
Mocha coffee is like the Blue Point oyster ; it is very 
rare, and there are many imitations. The town of 
Mocha has no harbor, and ships rarely call there, so 
the little coffee it produces is sent to Aden. Further 
up the coast is the town of Jiddah. It is from this 
place that pilgrims start for Mecca, sacred city of the 
Mohammedans. Only one white man has ever visited 
Mecca, as white people are not allowed in the place. 
This man, an English officer named Burton, disguised 
himself as an Arab physician. He spent several years 
in familiarizing himself with the Mohammedan religion 
and the Arab language. After his preparations were 
complete, he shipped as a deck passenger at Suez and 
successfully deceived the dozens of real Arabs and Mo- 
hammedans with whom he was intimately associated. 
The pilgrims to Mecca from Jiddah are cruelly robbed 
by the Arabs through whose country they must pass, 
and the party Burton traveled with had one pitched 
battle with the thieves. Burton wrote a book telling 
of his experiences, and I know of nothing more interest- 
ing in the way of adventure. A railroad is now being 
built to Mecca, if it has not been actually completed, 
and Jiddah will lose much of its former importance. 
War and slavery are common in most of the Arab towns 
9,long the Red Sea, and it is dangerous for ships to send 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 417 

parties ashore, unless heavily armed. During the hot, 
dry season, many of these towns are entirely deserted ; 
the inhabitants go into the mountains, and remain 
there until the weather becomes endurable. The Red 
Sea has a shore-Hne of more than three thousand miles, 
yet the country surrounding it is so worthless that there 
is almost no town of importance on its shores, and no 
river runs into it. There is no rain in the vicinity of 
the Red Sea, and it loses eight feet every year from 
evaporation, which must be made up from other seas 
where there is more rain and less heat. . . . You 
hear a great deal of the "Mysticism of the East." 
This mysticism is as foolish as the doggerel used by 
children when they count the buttons on your coat : 
"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor 
lawyer, merchant chief," etc. Mysticism never means 
anything. The West solves riddles, and discovers how 
to produce a hundred bushels of corn per acre : the 
East pays great attention to Mysticism, and has more 
poor, dirty and ignorant people than any other part of 
the world. When the plague breaks out in the East, 
as a result of foolish pilgrimages to Mecca or Benares, 
the pilgrims say the plague is a part of the Mysticism 
of the East, and continue to drink holy and dirty water. 
But the men of the West have a better doctrine : its 
chief tenet is, "Clean Up," and the plague disappears 
before it. . . . All our deck passengers left us at 
Aden. Men who spend half their time saying their 
prayers do not flourish in the great world west of Suez. 
. . . The passengers spend a good deal of their time 
in reading. I often hear them talking of the books 
they are reading. "How do you Uke it?" one will ask. 



418 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

"Oh," the other will reply, "it serves to kill time, but 
is rather foolish." What queer things you find in 
books! And how much alike many of the famous ones 
are. "Adam Bede," " The Manxman," and " The Scar- 
let Letter," were all written around an "idea" that is 
unnatural, unclean and absurd. 



Wednesday, April 23. — We are in a v/ider part of 
the Red Sea today, and are not meeting so many ships ; 
the few we have seen have been far away. Yesterday 
we were in a part of the sea almost as narrow as a 
river, and we could not avoid meeting all passing ves- 
sels. At one time last night so many brilliantly lighted 
ships were in sight that we were reminded of a night 
parade of electrical features at a celebration. . . . 
We have had a strong head-wind all day which trav- 
elers pray for in the Red Sea, and toward evening the 
" Burgermeister " acquired considerable motion. . . . 
The English passengers on board organized a Sports 
Committee this morning, and are now busily engaged 
in arranging for such elevating sports as "In a Pig's 
Eye," "Are You There?" potato-races for women, etc. 
The traveling Englishman has lately gone crazy about 
ship sports; he is like a Methodist who believes in 
sanctification by baptism : he will talk of nothing else, 
and insists on arguing the question with you. In 
England, only cheap people at country fairs engage in 
such sports, but on English ships, dukes and princes 
are expected to take part, for the honor of Old England. 
The German passengers are not enlisting for the sports. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 419 

but the English urge them to take part to the point 
of annoyance. ... I have heard none of the pas- 
sengers mention the fact that the water in the Red Sea 
is not red ; the fact that the water in the Red Sea is 
blue, now seems to be generally known. ... A 
passenger in the third class is very ill, and the ship 
doctor, and a German military doctor who volunteered 
his services, decided that the man has malaria of the 
head. Malaria is so common in the tropics that now 
they have it in the head. ... A peculiar thing 
about the " Burgermeister " is that several of the gen- 
tlemen passengers wear white socks. Somewhere on 
this trip I met a man who was irritable because his 
white socks attracted attention. He should be on the 
"Burgermeister," where they are quite common. . . . 
I heard a woman make a remarkable statement last 
night. She said : " I have been traveling four months, 
and have not seen a single married man attempt to 
flirt ; all the flirting I have seen has been done by mar- 
ried women with young men." I submit the statement 
as unusual, without comment. . . . The dance 
last night was a failure ; the orchestra played several 
numbers which did not attract any dancers at all, and 
only five couples danced during the entire evening. 
All the women dancers were married, and their hus- 
bands sat around and frowned at the young fellows 
who were dancing with them. There is nothing in the 
notion that husbands want their wives to be very pop- 
ular with other men. . . . During the concert this 
evening, the tall negro man nurse who has whiskers, 
appeared with a bottle of milk, and submitted it to the 
inspection of his employer. The woman smelt and 



420 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

then tasted the milk; it seemed satisfactory, for she 
gave it back to the tall Kaffir, and he disappeared, 
probably to feed his charge. 



Thursday, April 24. — I awoke early this morning 
because of a strange and unusual sensation. I feared I 
might be catching the fever, or plague, but later dis- 
covered I was cold. A chilly head-wind was blowing, 
and this in the Red Sea, which rumor says is as hot as 
a furnace! The passengers went about wearing over- 
coats all day. At 2 : 30 p. m. we passed out of the 
tropics. . . . For two days we have been in that 
part of the Red Sea which is two hundred miles 
wide, and have not seen many ships ; but tonight we 
'were in a narrow part, and four ships were in sight 
at one time. All of them were small ; there are 
many ships in the east, but no very big ones. If one 
of the big ships of the Atlantic should appear at Bom- 
bay or Colombo, people would travel hundreds of miles 
to see it. . . . The general impression in America 
is that an English lord is an effeminate little man who 
only knows enough to carry an eyeglass in one eye. 
As a matter of fact, some of them seem to be quite 
useful and manly. Lord Delamere is one of the con- 
spicuous figures in the development of British East 
Africa, and has done much for that country. In ad- 
dition, he is the world's greatest lion-hunter. Up to 
1911, he had killed seventy lions, single-handed. Of 
the first forty-nine he shot, not one escaped. No other 
lion-hunter has a record half as good as Lord Delamere. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 421 

Another useful man in Africa is Lord Carnworth, who 
is an extensive farmer, as is Lord Delamere. Both 
these men engage in expensive agricultural experiments 
for the general good. Lord Carnworth lately wrote a 
book entitled, "A Colony in the Making." It dis- 
plays a wonderful knowledge of British East Africa. 
Among other things, he says the American hunters 
who come here are game hogs, and places Mr. Roose- 
velt in that class. He also speaks jestingly of the 
dangers of hunting in Africa. The terrible rhino, which 
in books is never content unless he has a hunter im- 
paled on his single terrible horn, is not thought to be 
dangerous by hunters who live in this country. . . . 
In his book. Lord Carnworth discusses the native labor 
question quite frankly. He says what practically all 
the whites here say : that the missionaries are doing 
no good — that their converts are worse than the un- 
converted negroes. I quote his exact language : 

"Inevitably but unfortunately the mission-educated 
native does not bear a good name, either among his 
fellow natives or among Europeans. It is, alas, a very 
generally accepted fact that one should beware of mis- 
sion servants, who almost invariably lie, drink and 
steal." 

Speaking of Roosevelt reminds me that in German 
East Africa I saw his hunting book, translated into 
German, on sale at the bookstores. Everyone knows 
of him, and around Mombasa all the natives say with 
pride that they saw him. There are dozens of big- 
game hunters on this boat ; most of them know men 
who were with Roosevelt, and one of them was in 
Roosevelt's party for a time. They all say Roosevelt 



422 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

was very popular in Africa, but that Kermit, his son, 
was cordially despised. Roosevelt himself, they say, 
is a thorough sportsman, and a man of undoubted 
courage. He is not considered a particularly good 
shot, but they say he is the luckiest hunter who ever 
handled a gun. Besides, everything was specially ar- 
ranged for his hunt. Not only all the white residents, 
but all the native chiefs, did what they could to locate 
game for him ; he did not have the trouble of the usual 
hunter. It is further said over here that Roosevelt 
was a great talker, and that he would quit hunting 
any time to tell about his well-known theories for bet- 
tering humanity. . . . It is also agreed that hunt- 
ers are very unpopular among the actual residents of 
Africa ; not that the residents object to the game be- 
ing killed, but every hunter requires a large number 
of natives for his outfit, and these are drawn mainly 
from the farms, where labor is scarce, and badly needed. 
There are millions of native men able to work, but most 
of them won't work. In the native settlements, the 
hard labor is mainly performed by the women, children, 
and old men; the stalwart fellows who would do the 
work in a civilized community, strut about covered 
with grease, looking for fights with other tribes. The 
whites say these idlers should be made to work ; that 
it is better that they work for a shilling a day than 
spend their time in idleness and mischief, and I would 
not be surprised to hear that the British have adopted 
a Vagrancy Act to reach the loafers. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 423 

Friday, April 25. — One of the passengers plays the 
piano a good deal, and plays it well, and I have just 
learned that he is a noted lion-hunter. That is the 
funniest combination I have ever heard of; a piano- 
player who is a lion-hunter. . . . There is on board 
a captain in the British army, and a captain in the 
German army. You would think they would affiliate, 
but they do not ; on the contrary, they glare at each 
other. The German captain wears his uniform a good 
deal, and as the British captain does not, I am satisfied 
that he thinks the German is lacking in taste. . . . 
Among the passengers are two elderly men married to 
young wives ; Germans who occupy official positions 
of some kind in German East Africa. They are the 
most loving couples on board ; the old husbands al- 
ways have their arms about their wives when on deck. 
If there is any one thing particularly fitted for privacy, 
it is love. I think the old gentlemen believe that the 
other passengers talk about them — and they do — and 
want to show them that their young wives are satisfied. 
. . . We have been having Sports today, the Eng- 
lish gentlemen having had their way. . . . Every 
little while two men dash by with their legs tied to- 
gether. They are practicing for the three-legged race, 
and have already run over two babies and one negro 
boy nurse. In the Ladies' Potato Race, two women 
fell headlong, and the exhibition of dry goods was as 
indelicate as that seen in a dry-goods window to show 
new spring underwear. There is something wrong 
with every woman's figure, and a potato-race brings 
out the irregularities. 



424 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

% 

Saturday, April 26. — We reached Suez at 1 : 30 
this afternoon, after a chilly ride through the narrow 
end of the Red Sea, which is known as the Gulf of 
Suez. All morning, land was in sight on both sides, 
and lighthouses on lonely islands were frequent. At 
3 o'clock this morning we passed Mount Sinai. I have 
asked about half the passengers what happened on 
Mount Sinai to make it famous, and they don't know. 
, . . Three hours before reaching Suez we saw a 
steamship that had gone ashore during the night. 
Another vessel was assisting it, and we did not stop. 
. . . We had a long wait at Suez before being ad- 
mitted to the canal. The port doctor, a woman, amused 
us by coming on board, and marshaling us in the music- 
room for inspection. As our names were called, we 
walked past the doctor, and she looked at us in a man- 
ner intended to be searching. I was called out as 
"Herr Howe," while Adelaide answered to "Fraulein 
Howe." . . . We had a scheme to go to Cairo by 
special train from Suez, and rejoin the ship at Port 
Said, but the authorities would not let us land, owing 
to our taking on a dozen or more Arab firemen at Aden, 
where there is plague. But dozens of Egyptians sur- 
rounded the ship, in httle boats, and offered us all sorts 
of articles, which they sent up for our inspection in 
baskets. One ship went into the canal ahead of us, 
having been waiting longer, and a dozen or more boats 
came out carrying mud from the canal dredgers. Fi- 
nally a launch appeared, bringing the long-expected 
pilot, and at 5 : 30 p. m. we steamed slowly into the 
canal, passing within a few hundred feet of the main 
streets of Suez. In an hour, we passed two freight 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 425 

steamers, and they gave us right of way, as ours is a 
mail-boat. . . . The Suez Canal, as everyone 
knows, runs through the Egyptian desert, and the des- 
olation on the Arabian side interested me greatly. The 
canal requires so many workmen that it is fringed with 
residences of one sort and another; some are boat- 
houses, some are huts, and some are sightly stations. 
And every quarter of a mile there seems to be a dredge, 
to keep the channel the required depth. Every foot 
of the canal, on both sides, is being lined with stone, 
and for this work a great many Egyptian laborers are 
required. . . . On the Egyptian side there is a 
fresh-water canal, supplied from the Nile, and this is 
used to irrigate a considerable stretch of country. With 
a glass, we could see a good many typical Egyptian 
farm-houses, and Egyptian agricultural life in various 
stages ; but on the Arabian side, there was the lonely 
desert you have seen in pictures and read about. At 
one place we saw a caravan of camels in camp for the 
night : the drivers in one group, and the camels in 
another. At another place we saw a jackal among the 
little hills composed of dirt from the canal. The ani- 
mal was gaunt and ugly, and looked at the ship indif- 
ferently. There was a great deal to see, but the sun 
was declining rapidly, and at 7 : 30, when we left the 
deck and went down to dinner, we could see nothing 
fifty feet beyond the lighted decks. . . . There was 
to be a dance after dinner, beginning at 9 o'clock, but 
the night was cold, and before that hour the travelers 
from Kansas went to bed ; just as the ship entered one 
of the lakes which form thirty miles of the canal. In 
this lake we steamed at full speed, whereas in the canal 



426 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

proper we had been running at five miles an hour. At 
Suez, we took on a special lighting apparatus; not a 
headlight, but a searchlight. This was attached to 
our prow, and lighted our way. . . . The engineer 
of the "Burgermeister," a fat German we all admire, 
sat on deck while we were passing through the canal, 
reading a newspaper. I asked him how often he had 
been through, and he guessed that he had made the 
trip seventy times. His ship makes four trips a year 
around Africa. 



Sunday, April 27. — When I went on deck at 5 : 30 
this morning, the sun was just peeping out of the Med- 
iterranean, and Port Said was in sight. I was the only 
passenger on deck, and although I expected Adelaide 
every moment, she did not appear until we were tied 
up in Port Said, an hour and a half later; the Suez 
Canal greatly excited me, although I had been through 
it before, but it did not greatly excite Adelaide. Half 
a dozen Arab sailboats, loaded with coal, passed in the 
canal; they had the peculiar sails seen on boats on 
the Nile, and were so old that I wondered they did not 
fall to pieces. On the larger boats were three men, and 
two on the smaller ones. The masts were very tall, 
and in this flat country the sails catch enough wind to 
push the boats along. . . . When Adelaide ap- 
peared at 7 : 30, I proposed that we go ashore before 
breakfast. She agreed to the proposition, and we were 
walking the streets of Port Said ten minutes later, as 
the ship was tied up within a hundred feet of the prin- 
cipal street. . . . Port Said is said to be a very 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 427 

high-priced and dishonest town, but the boatman 
charged only six cents each to take us to land, and the 
price of a carriage is only fifty cents an hour. We en- 
gaged a guide, because one followed us, and began ex- 
plaining things, and we could not get rid of him. Be- 
sides, he said his price was only a shilling an hour. In 
no other town we have visited have we found prices 
as low as in Port Said, which has a worse reputation 
than any other town in the world. Port Said has reg- 
ulations for the protection of visitors, and enforces 
them. When you go ashore, you do not pay the boat- 
man, who may charge you any price he sees fit, but 
you pay an ofiicial at the landing. Get rid of the no- 
tion printed everywhere that Port Said is "tough." 
In addition to being an orderly place, it is very inter- 
esting. Sunday is not observed in the town, for two 
reasons: 1. Ships arrive and send passengers ashore 
nearly every hour of every day, and these want sup- 
plies on Sunday the same as on other days ; 2. The 
sixty thousand inhabitants are mainly Mohammedans, 
and they have no Sunday. . . . There were sev- 
eral other ships in the harbor, and the streets were 
crowded at 8 a. m. In front of one cafe, an orchestra 
of fifteen men and women was playing, and playing 
well. Most of the shops are devoted to tourist trade, 
but we visited an Arab market instead of the curio 
stores. The older portion of Port Said is as purely 
Egj^tian as Cairo, and as dirty and oriental. The 
streets are narrow, and the houses high, and the na- 
tive shops are as interesting as they are anywhere. 
Our guide was an Arab, and took us to his church : a 
Mohammedan mosque, which we could not enter with- 



428 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

out putting coverings on our feet. Everywhere we 
heard exploding fire-crackers; today is some sort of 
Mohammedan festival. . . . We received a lot of 
mail from home ; the first in more than four months. 
After getting our mail, we lost interest in Port Said, 
and went back to the ship to read our letters. We 
found these so interesting that at 10 : 30, when the 
"Burgermeister" left for Naples, we barely glanced at 
the famous statue to Ferdinand de Lesseps which 
adorns the entrance to the canal. 



Monday, April 28. — We are approaching the 
Blessed Country of Bad Weather again. This morn- 
ing the sky is as threatening as it is on the morning 
when you give a picnic, and when you wish it would 
do one thing or the other. No country can amount to 
much without bad weather : the trouble with Africa 
and Arizona is too much fine weather. . . . The 
Meriterranean, which we all dreaded, was as smooth 
last night as a millpond, and shows no disposition today 
to change its pacific character. . , . The first 
thing you think of, on boarding a ship, is that funny 
people travel. We meet a few nice, normal, sane peo- 
ple, but most of them are freaks. On every ship we 
meet the foolish son of a rich man, who is allowed to 
travel to keep him away from home. The woman 
traveler is nearly always peculiar; she is usually an 
old widow with money, and as ugly as she is cranky. 
There is a professional traveler always met with who 
has no sense, and very little politeness, but he has been 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 429 

everywhere. It is a mistake to imagine that only rich 
and agreeable people are met in traveling. The best 
people remain at home; we have met neither dukes 
nor princesses on the trip, and very few we remember 
from one ship to another. . . . There is a kind of 
traveler who annoys you by his looks. A man of this 
type came on board at Port Said. He is a faded-out 
old rat with gold teeth, very thin and sandy hair, and 
a waxed moustache. He is quite impatient because 
he has not created a flutter on board, since it is plain 
to be seen that he has traveled a great deal ; he is not 
content to wait a few days, until news of his exploits 
gets about easily and naturally. . . . Another 
man came on board at Port Said who is accompanied 
by a wife and three daughters. The ship is crowded, 
and this man, who is paying five fares, sleeps on the 
floor ! People are that foolish about traveling. People 
generally are as crazy and disagreeable about travel- 
ing as the English are about Sports. . . . The 
women have great respect for the bishop of their 
church, but they have greater respect for a woman 
traveling with a maid. Every woman believes she is 
entitled to a maid. There is a woman on board who 
has one. The other women say she is the slouchiest 
dressed person on the ship. You may say that is envy, 
but it isn't: it's the truth. . . . When you buy 
anything, pay for it in cash. It is so easy to sign a 
check, or have it charged. When the passengers buy 
wines, they sign their names to a slip of paper, and 
settle once a week. One of the amusing things on 
board is to see the men studying their bar bills. Ev- 
ery passenger thinks he has been robbed, but his sig- 



430 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

nature confronts him for every item, and he cannot 
get a fair start at indignation. . . . The New 
York banker, Mr. Hepburn, mentioned elsewhere as 
returning from a hunt, does not have much confidence 
in the future of Africa. It has too many pests and too 
much dry weather, he says. Besides, much of the 
country is volcanic, and the soil a thin vegetable and 
leaf mold. Mr. Hepburn says that while hunting, one 
of his guides was an Englishman who was once a mem- 
ber of parliament, with an income of $60,000 a year. 
But he went the pace, and spent his money, and is 
now a guide in Africa at $5 a day. Another guide in 
the Hepburn party was a man named Cunningham, 
who was attached to the Roosevelt expedition. Cun- 
ningham is a very noted man, and receives $400 a 
-month for his services. Although Mr. Hepburn is a 
New York banker, a former comptroller of the cur- 
rency, and noted big-game hunter, it is so dull on 
board that he spends a good deal of his time teaching 
Adelaide card tricks. He is an elderly man, and so 
modest and polite that we regard him as a credit to 
his country. ... A party of eight came on board 
at Port Said, and I am glad they are not Americans. 
They are English or Colonials, and have taken the ship. 
They are very superior in three particulars : 1. They 
went to Port Said two weeks ago in the "Tabora," a 
larger and newer ship than the ''Burgermeister ;" 2. 
They were in Cairo four days ; 3. They have been in 
Palestine. They sit together in the dining-room, and 
every other word they use is ''Tabora," a leviathan of 
8,000 tons. These people are going to London, and 
this is their first trip. There are three girls in the party, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 431 

all of them in love with one sweet young man, and they 
hold his hand on deck. The other passengers look at 
them in astonishment, if not disgust. Americans are 
said to be "loud." I don't believe they are half as 
bad as they are reported to be. A German ship cap- 
tain once said to me : "The Americans are, as a rule, 
our best behaved passengers, followed by the Germans. 
The worst behaved are the English." ... In the 
traveling I have done, I have seen few "loud" Ameri- 
cans, but I have seen many "loud" Enghsh. And it 
is the English who criticise us most. 



Tuesday, April 29. — We have seen no land since 
leaving Port Said, except that we passed the island of 
Crete. Some say we passed it last evening, and some 
say we passed it this morning : it has been pointed out 
to me twice, and both sights of it were very hazy. 
. . . Ships are not seen as frequently in the Medi- 
terranean as in the Red Sea; we have seen but one 
steamship in two days — a big P. & O. liner en route 
to India. On the Red Sea, a half-dozen were fre- 
quently in sight at one time. The explanation is that 
the Mediterranean is wide, and ships keep a consid- 
erable distance from each other, whereas the Red Sea 
is often almost as narrow as a river. . . . There 
are two women on board from Johannesburg, but they 
did not know each other there ; indeed, they had never 
heard of each other before coming on board. Each 
says of the other : "I cannot imagine who she can be." 
. . . When a German leaves the ship's table, he 



432 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

bows very politely to those passengers remaining. I 
believe this very pretty custom is confined entirely to 
the Germans. . . . The barkeeper has been hu- 
miliated, and relieved from duty ; I don't know what 
his offense was, but I hear he is charged with becom- 
ing impatient while on duty. The Germans say that 
when a man is employed to serve the public, impa- 
tience is a gross offense, and I agree with them. For a 
day or two, the barkeeper did nothing, and was the 
most contrite and penitent human being I have ever 
seen, but this morning he appeared as a waiter in the 
dining-room, and is trying hard to regain the favor 
of the chief steward. . . . There are many foolish 
things for men to do, but probably the most foolish 
is to buy champagne. Every day at dinner I see 
dozens of men pay three or four dollars for a bottle of 
champagne, simply to "act smart." Boys are not 
the only ones who "act smart" in company, and force 
their parents to whip them. . . . The passenger 
who has his wife and three daughters with him attracts 
a great deal of attention from the men. His women- 
folks have four pieces of fancy work under way all the 
time; think of that man's dry-goods bills! And I 
cannot sleep at night from thinking what his laundry 
bill must be. There is a laundry on board, operated 
by Chinese, who do excellent work, but their prices 
are something to talk about. I sent out a little dab 
of washing the other day, and the bill was $6. I pay 
for waists for only one woman, whereas that other man 
must pay for waists for four. It should be against the 
law for any man to take care of four women. . . . 
The New York banker who is returning from a hunting 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 433 

trip in Africa, is a director in the Texas company, 
which is trying to become as great a robber as the 
Standard Oil Co. He told me today that a few months 
ago his company let a contract to an American firm 
for an additional tank steamer, at $590,000. A foreign 
builder offered to build exactly the same ship for $380,- 
000. The Texas company was compelled to pay forty 
per cent additional because of our policy of protection. 
What becomes of that additional $210,000? Does it 
go to American labor? . . . Most of it, probably. 
When you pay high prices for meat, the farmer is being 
benefited ; when the Texas company pays a high price 
for a ship, the workmen who fashion the ship, and mine 
the steel that goes into it, are benefited. Taxes, how- 
ever collected, mean a burden to the consumer. When 
you pay twenty cents for an article which formerly 
cost ten cents, three cents of the excess goes to the 
workman, and seven cents of the excess is charged by 
the American politician for cost of collection. It is 
the workers who pay taxes and the tremendous cost 
of collection. ... I have frequently spoken in 
these notes of hearing the English everywhere compli- 
ment America. The notion that foreigners sneer at 
us, is a mistaken one. In the London Telegraph, a 
copy of which I picked up today, I read a page refer- 
ence to the death of J. Pierpont Morgan. 

"The field of the American financier," the article 
said, "is a country sixty times the area of England, the 
most richly endowed territory in the world, inhabited 
by ninety millions of the most energetic wealth-pro- 
ducers on the face of the globe." 

In the same article I read that Mr. Morgan once 



434 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

called on the German Kaiser, Afterwards the Kaiser 
said he was surprised to find Mr. Morgan "not well 
informed regarding the philosophical development of 
nations." I often think the philosopher is an unim- 
portant man ; he looks into the future, and sees many- 
things that are not there. The philosopher is a re- 
cluse ; a thinker. He hides away from mankind, and 
writes books about subjects he does not know much 
about. J. P. Morgan knew mankind intimately, and 
benefited it because of his knowledge. He made bets 
that the people would do certain things at certain times, 
and became rich because of the accuracy of his knowl- 
edge ; yet he is accused of knowing nothing about "the 
philosophical development of nations"! He had a 
tremendous fund of practical knowledge, and that beats 
-all the philosophy in the world. Morgan believed that 
in the human family, character was everything; that 
character was the basis of all credit, and that the simple 
doctrine of good conduct for its own sake, is the great- 
est religion in the world. How superior Morgan's 
simple religion was to the Hindu's philosophy! Mor- 
gan was an humble citizen, yet he accomplished more 
than did Kaiser Wilhelm, a philosopher and a king. 
A nation fought Morgan continuously and bitterly, 
yet he was undoubtedly a public benefactor. Wilhelm 
had the love of a great nation, yet he undoubtedly talks 
too much, and has been repeatedly humiliated for the 
habit. Wilhelm is great in spite of his indiscretions, 
being a king; but J. P. Morgan was great in spite of 
the fact that he lacked the friendship of his own nation, 
and was compelled to do his good work in the face of 
bitter ^nd often malicious opposition. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 435 

Wednesday, April 30. — When I went on deck this 
morning, several of the passengers were ahead of me, 
gazing at mountains off to the right : Italy. By 9 
o'clock we were close to the shore, and with a glass 
could see many villages still in ruins from the earth- 
quake of five years ago. The sides of the mountains 
were terraced, and used as vineyards. In one place, 
in a canyon far up the mountain, we saw a village 
which seemed to have been built around an old castle. 
We were approaching the Strait of Messina, and ships 
were as numerous as they were in the narrowest part 
of the Red Sea ; at one time, seven sailing-ships were 
in sight, and several steamers. Presently, on the left, 
Sicily appeared, and we gazed at Sicily awhile, and 
then went over to the other deck and looked at Italy, 
unable to decide which was the more interesting. 
Both are very mountainous, and much ahke. Vil- 
lages are thick, not only along the shore, but the sides 
of the mountain are spotted with them, and in both 
Italy and Sicily we saw many curious old castles and 
monasteries. On both sides, also, we saw many ruins 
from the earthquake, although they seemed to be rather 
more numerous in Sicily than in Italy. . . . Just 
before entering the Strait at the narrowest part, where 
it is only two miles wide, we saw the town of Messina, 
which was almost completely destroyed by the earth- 
quake of 1908. Hundreds of the wrecked houses seem 
never to have been rebuilt, and they present a scene 
of desolation, but around them many new houses have 
been built. This is also true on the Italian coast. 
Many of these new houses were sent from America, 
ready to set up. Messina had a population of eighty 



436 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

thousand. Its old citadel was not destroyed, and we 
saw a good many ships in its harbor. Opposite Mes- 
sina is the Italian town of Riggio, which is six or seven 
hundred years older than the Christian era. On both 
sides of the Strait we could see broad streams (per- 
fectly dry as a result of a recent drouth) coming from 
the mountains. . . . The captain said we should 
be in the most interesting part of the Strait at 1 p. m., 
the lunch hour, and ordered lunch postponed half an 
hour. His prediction was exactly verified, and nothing 
could have driven the passengers from the decks at 
1 p. M., there was so much to see. . . . At 4 p. m. 
we came to Stromboli, a volcanic island in the sea. 
Captain Ulrich said he would pass on the south side 
of the mountain, that we might better see the volcano ; 
the distance was greater, but this change in the ship's 
course enabled us to get a very fine sight of StromboH. 
From the south side we saw the crater, and the smoke 
pouring out of it in great volume. There is no light- 
house on Stromboh, as the volcano furnishes a red glare 
by which mariners steer their course at night. You 
would think people would keep away from a lonely 
island in the sea which smokes all the time, and is 
liable to erupt, and destroy ever3rthing for many miles 
around, but they don't. We saw two villages on Strom- 
boli : one of them of good size. The larger one is 
located a considerable distance from the crater, but the 
other is not a thousand feet from the track of the lava 
as it descends to the sea. And these smoking volcanoes 
not only bark ; they bite. Only a few miles away is 
Messina, where eighty thousand people were destroyed 
only five years ago. In the other direction is Vesuvius, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 437 

which has taken a greedy toll of human life for many 
years ; the last time in 1906. 



Thursday, May 1. — I have seen many prettier 
sights than the far-famed Bay of Naples. Many peo- 
ple say a look at the bay caused them to forget the 
frets and worries of life, but I had no such feeling. 
We arrived early in the morning, when the town was 
partly hidden in mists, but later I saw the bay in bright 
sunshine, from several points of advantage, but it did 
not greatly impress me. The Bay of Naples is so 
large that it is not a harbor, therefore a breakwater 
has been constructed, and behind this our ship an- 
chored, in company with a good many others. . . . 
I have spoken elsewhere of English becoming the uni- 
versal language. This morning I heard the Italian 
pilot telling the captain of the ship a piece of war news. 
The pilot talked broken English. A Frenchman, a 
Portuguese, a Belgian and a Hollander gathered to 
hear the war news, and they all understood English. 
. . . After the usual medical inspection, which al- 
ways seems ineffective and useless in the first cabin, 
the passengers were allowed to land. We went to the 
Hotel Vesuve, where I had been before, and were given 
two excellent rooms overlooking the bay. In front of 
the hotel was a street, and then the sea, and from my 
window I watched the fishermen at work ; they were 
so close that I could have hailed them, and asked what 
sort of fish they were taking out of the nets. Directly 
in front of our windows was an old castle and fort, and 



438 Travel letters prom 

soldiers were always passing in or out of the gate. 
The Hotel Vesuve is the best of the dozens at which 
we have stopped, and the price is only thirty-six francs 
per day; that is, we have two of the best rooms in 
one of the best hotels in Italy, and the price is $3.60 
per day each, including meals. Living at the hotels 
in South Africa is pioneering compared with living 
at the Hotel Vesuve in Naples. Living at hotels is a 
joke at home, but living at the Hotel Vesuve in Naples 
makes a man think of breaking up housekeeping. . . . 
Adelaide thinks Naples is the most delightful town we 
have seen; and the list of towns we have visited in- 
cludes Pompeii, which was destroyed by an eruption 
from Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. It was so com- 
pletely covered up by ashes that its site was forgotten, 
and it lay neglected for seventeen hundred years. 
Then the work of digging it out began, and is still in 
progress, and will continue for many years to come. 
Pompeii existed long before Naples ; it was an old city 
when Christ was born, and was a seaside resort of the 
Romans. Probably everyone has read the story of 
Pompeii, and I shall not print it again, except to ex- 
press my astonishment over the fact that much of the 
finest art work in the world today was found in the 
ruins of Pompeii; the moderns have not been able 
to equal it. Everything of interest found in the ruins 
may now be seen in the museum at Naples. The 
people of Pompeii had excellent plumbing at the time 
of the eruption; probably the ancients thousands of 
years earlier knew much that we now call modern. In 
the museum at Naples may be seen jewelry from Pom- 
peii that would pass for an exhibit made in 1913 ; pat- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 439 

terns are the same, and the work equally good. The 
implements used today by dentists and doctors may 
also be seen among the relics from Pompeii. There is 
an ugly instrument known as the speculum, which may 
be seen in drug stores and doctors' offices ; I have no 
doubt it was used too much three thousand or more 
years ago, for I saw one in the museum at Naples. It 
was found in the ruins of Pompeii, and it is exactly 
like the instrument used too much today. ... I 
will mention another thing about Pompeii the general 
reader may not know. The Romans and Greeks who 
occupied the town were a dissolute, pleasure-loving lot, 
and they left many relics that are shown to men only. 
In the big museum at Naples, there is one room prob- 
ably forty feet long, and half as wide. In it are pre- 
served literally thousands of disreputable things found 
in Pompeii. They include statuary and pictures in 
mosaics. I heard a woman say lately that she despised 
Pompeii so much that she did not enjoy her visit to the 
place ; probably her husband had told her what he 
saw in the Dirty Room, and she hated the people who 
formerly occupied the deserted houses and streets. 
The people are certainly improving in morals all the 
time ; we are not as good as we should be now, but we 
are better in every respect than the ancients were. I 
often wonder that the ancients, who believed in so 
many gods, were not scared into better conduct. . . . 
Pompeii is reached by railroad train from Naples. If 
you take an express train, the twenty miles may be 
traveled in half an hour. Electric cars also run there, 
but they make many stops, and are much slower. 
When you are in Pompeii, you are near Vesuvius, the 



440 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

mountain which has destroyed so many Hves. It is 
particularly peaceful just now, and I saw no smoke 
issuing from the crater. Seven years ago it went on a 
rampage, and destroyed several villages and six or 
seven hundred lives. At that time the mountain lost 
three hundred feet of its top, and is so insignificant- 
looking now that a good many visitors to Naples do 
not make the journey to the summit, which is easily 
accomplished by electric and cog railway. A mountain 
near Vesuvius is now higher than Vesuvius itself, but 
the wicked old pile will grow, and no doubt will erupt 
at some time in the future, and kill thousands again. 
Stromboli, which we saw yesterday, is a much more 
impressive sight at present than Vesuvius. 



Friday, May 2. — It has been said a good many times 
that Italy has too many churches and royal palaces. 
Naples has two royal palaces, although the king lives 
at Rome. One is in town, and the other in the coun- 
try, near the sea. We visited the king's town palace, 
as it is open to the public two days of the week. There 
are eight hundred rooms in the place, and twelve hun- 
dred servants care for it. ... A room in a king's 
palace is usually a huge affair, probably 100x50 feet, 
with an oval ceiling, and great chandeliers containing 
candles specially manufactured for royalty. The furni- 
ture in each room is of a different pattern ; fancy chairs 
and divans made of gilt and brocade. No palace seems 
to have been made as a place of residence for a family, 
but for show, and intrigue, and murder, and dancing, 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 441 

and alarms, and riots. Most of the famous murders 
in history have taken place in palaces. Not far from 
the king's town palace in Naples is an old palace now 
occupied by soldiers as a barracks. It is a dirty place, 
but we were taken to the upper rooms where are pre- 
served rehcs of royalty nearly a thousand years old. 
These include a chapel, decorated by artists of great 
fame. Then we were taken down a winding stairway 
into a terrible place where dead bodies were displayed 
in coffins. The dead bodies in the coffins were those 
of princes, and cardinals, and all of them had died 
violent deaths. One cardinal had an expression of 
agony on his face which will haunt me for months ; 
he had been smothered in the most inhuman way. 
The bodies we saw were dressed in the magnificent 
clothing they wore when they were murdered. This 
sight was seen in a noisome hole underground, and was 
so terrible that Adelaide almost cried when she begged 
me to take her out. We had a guide with us, and a 
warder from the castle, but neither of them could tell 
us much about the place, except that it is a relic of 
Spanish occupation in the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
turies. ... In thinking of the magnificence of 
palaces and castles, always remember the terrible mur- 
ders that have disgraced them. A king fills us com- 
mon people with awe, but he always has a brother, an 
uncle, a cousin, or some other near relative who knows 
that he deserves death. I think I have longed for 
nearly everything else, but I never longed to be a king, 
nor would I care to live in a palace with twelve hun- 
dred servants, any one of whom would poison me for 
two dollars and promise of a postofiice. . . . On 



442 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

the way to the king's town palace we passed through 
the old part of Naples ; a district of tall houses, all 
of them crowded with poor people. The street was 
very narrow, and the sun was almost obscured by 
clothes newly washed, and drying in the sunhght. 
The wash-lines ran across the streets, and were so thick 
that I thought the sight the most curious I had ever 
seen. The streets were so crowded with children that 
we got through them with difficulty, and every little 
while some one who had been to America, hailed us in 
bad English. The lower floor of every house was 
nearly always occupied with a little shop, in which 
a family also lived. In one of these places, a little 
child was lying dead. The body was surrounded with 
candles, and five women sat in the room. For some 
reason, the mother of the child wanted us to look at it ; 
she came out into the street, weeping, and made mo- 
tions indicating that she wanted us to go in, which 
-we did. The guide said the woman's husband was in 
America, and that she felt a friendly interest in us on 
that account. , . . The street was a steep one; 
so steep that we went down it by means of broad steps. 
I have seen a street almost exactly like it in Jerusalem. 
The cross-streets were narrower and steeper than the 
main street we traveled, and I was almost disposed 
to agree with Adelaide that Naples is the most inter- 
esting place we have visited. . . . James Gordon 
Bennett, of the New York Herald, issues an edition of 
his paper in Paris, and it is sold all over Europe by 
street peddlers. Twenty times a minute we were 
offered a copy of the Herald; the peddlers knew we 
were Americans, and were so insistent that I always 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 443 

carried a copy of the paper in my pocket, to show them 
I had one. They also sold the New York Times, and 
I carried a copy of that paper, too. . . . Flowers 
grow in great profusion in Italy, and are sold by street 
peddlers who are hanging onto your carriage half the 
time. I bought fifteen very fine roses, on one occasion, 
for ten cents. . . . The Italian lire and the French 
franc are of the same value, twenty cents, and the 
franc circulates everywhere in Italy, as the lire cir- 
culates everywhere in France. If you ask for Italian 
money in Italy, you are as apt to get francs as lires. 
. . . Prices may have advanced abroad, as at home, 
but I doubt if the advance has been as great. Adelaide 
needed a pair of gloves, and the price at one of the best 
shops in Naples was fifty cents a pair. The same 
gloves would cost $1.50 at home. . . . You hear 
a great deal about tips abroad : how the servants mob 
you at hotels, etc. The tip nuisance is worse in New 
York than it is in Naples; besides, larger tips are 
exacted in New York. Carriage-hire here is less than 
half what it is in New York, and when I land in that 
American city I shall pay for rooms at the Waldorf- 
Astoria more than I paid for rooms and meals at the 
Hotel Vesuve. And Naples is one of the greatest re- 
sorts in Europe, and the Hotel Vesuve is one of the 
best hotels in Naples. . . . We expressed a desire 
to see the San Carlos theatre, one of the most famous 
in the world, and the guide promptly took us there, 
and had it lighted up for our special benefit. I was 
willing to give the theatre man forty cents, but our 
man said twenty cents was enough, and that was what 
we paid. The cathedral in Naples is also a famous 



444 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

place, built in imitation of St. Peters, in Rome. And 
it is a very good imitation. The guide took us through 
this church, and never gave the priest guides more 
than half a franc, or ten cents each. I suppose he 
robbed us a good deal, but I never caught him at it. 
You are always hearing that when you shop in Naples, 
the shopkeeper is compelled to add something to the 
price for the guide. One day the guide left us for a 
few minutes, in a famous arcade, and we found prices 
the same as when the guide was along. English is 
spoken nearly everywhere in Naples and throughout 
Italy, because so many of its citizens have been to the 
United States. . . . The Italian girls are nearly 
all good-looking when young, but after they are mar- 
ried and have children, most of them become too fat. 
I have always thought it a good joke on a man to marry 
a girl weighing a hundred pounds, and have her in- 
crease her weight to two hundred, or two hundred and 
fifty. And the joke on the man is particularly good if 
his daughters, on reaching fifteen or sixteen, are also 
very fat. 



Saturday, May 3. — I had intended saihng from 
Naples on the North German-Lloyd ship "Princess 
Irene," a favorite, but when I reached Cook's office I 
found the ship crowded. I was offered the second of- 
ficer's room, if I paid $60 extra, but in pursuance of 
my vow to avoid favorites in future, I concluded to 
travel to New York on the French ship "Canada." 
This ship is new, and has not yet had time to become 
a favorite, so I secured very much better accommoda- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 445 

tions at a lower price than was demanded for the Ger- 
man boat. ... In Cairo, Egypt, is a famous hotel 
known as Shepherd's. There are at least four hotels 
in Cairo better than Shepherd's ; there are half a dozen 
just as good, and another half-dozen where you may 
secure satisfactory accommodations. Avoid favorites 
of every kind, if you wish fair treatment. . . . 
Wherever a traveler goes, he encounters free advertis- 
ing for the United States, but I saw a stars-and-stripes 
sight in Naples this afternoon that greatly impressed 
me. The "Canada" and "Princess Irene" were 
docked side by side, and as both were to sail at 6 p. m. 
for New York, both displayed the American flag. When 
I went to the dock at 4 p. m., the decks of both ships 
were black with emigrants, and they were still going 
up the gangways as thick as ants. When Adelaide 
and I went aboard the "Canada," the sailors were com- 
pelled to clear a way for us to the first-class decks, 
where there were fifty passengers, as compared with 
three or four hundred in the second cabin, and nearly 
two thousand in the steerage. Once on the upper 
decks of the "Canada," we could see a similar crowd 
of emigrants on the "Princess Irene," which lay 
alongside, and the emigrants kept coming until six 
o'clock, when the big whistle blew, and the gang-plank 
was drawn in. Three ships left Naples for New York 
today, and all of them were crowded with emigrants. 
And this doesn't happen occasionally ; it is of daily 
occurrence — not only here, but in many other ports. 
In every part of the world the people know about the 
United States, and go there in constantly increasing 
crowds, although South Africa, and Australia, and 



446 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

South America, and New Zealand, and Canada, and 
many other countries, are offering inducements to im- 
migrants. . . . We got away a httle after 6 : 30 
o'clock, and found the sea kind again ; this is our twen- 
ty-fifth day at sea without discomfort. There was a 
shower of rain just before we left Naples, which drove 
to cover the thousands of weeping women who had 
come to the dock to see friends depart, but outside the 
bay the sea was calm. Ten or fifteen poor children 
were on the dock, begging the passengers for pennies, 
but the rain didn't bother them. There was one boy 
who could turn handsprings, but while he was showing 
off his accomplishment, the other children got the pen- 
nies. The moral is, attend to business, and don't show 
off. 



Sunday, May 4. — ^When we awoke this morning, the 
"Canada" was lying in the harbor of Palermo, in Sicily, 
where it spent the day in taking on more emigrants. 
As the ship was to remain until evening, we went 
ashore at 8 : 30 for the day, accompanied by an old 
gentleman of seventy-six, who acted as guide. . . . 
I have neglected Palermo in my reading; I knew al- 
most nothing about it. I didn't know it contained 
another palace belonging to the king of Italy, and 
about four hundred thousand people. ... A few 
men are natural-born gentlemen. Our old guide was 
such a man. He lived in the United States, as a young 
man, and we were much pleased with him. ... In 
Italian and Sicilian towns, nearly every family owns a 
milk goat. These goats are sent to the country, to 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 447 

graze, and are brought in every night and morning to 
be milked. We drove up-town in Palermo just as the 
milk goats were being collected by the herd boys. The 
goats know where they belong, and often climb two or 
three flights of stairs, to be milked. Milch cows are 
also driven into town, and milked in the streets. The 
calves accompany their mothers, and to insure that 
they will not get lost, are tied to their mother's tail. 
There is a certain brand of Italian cattle, and they 
have not changed since the days of the Romans ; every 
section of the Old World has its particular kind of cat- 
tle. In South Africa we saw a good many queer-look- 
ing cattle from Madagascar, imported after the rinder- 
pest had killed nearly everything in Africa. In Egypt 
we saw another kind. India has another variety, and 
the Scotch and Irish also have varieties of their own. 
In the United States we are constantly improving cat- 
tle, and have no favorite except the best. . . . Al- 
though we visited Palermo on Sunday, the public mar- 
ket was in full blast. One man was making a tremen- 
dous outcry to attract attention to his beef. He said 
it was very cheap ; the price was thirty-two cents a 
pound. Beef is very high-priced in Sicily, and so are 
fish, but poultry is quite cheap. . . . Palermo has 
a wonderful cathedral, and the guide took us there, 
during a mass. There was a large choir of men and 
boys, and an archbishop conducted the service. The 
old guide was a devout Catholic, and frequently crossed 
himself while in the cathedral, but he took us through 
the worshipers, to look at the different wonders, and 
the worshipers didn't seem to mind it, or pay any at- 
tention to us. Occasionally we stopped, afraid to go 



448 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

on, but the old guide motioned for us to come on, and 
we walked among kneeling women to join our conduc- 
tor. There were several chapels in the place, all of 
which were shown us, but the big service finally be- 
came so interesting that we spent a quarter of an hour 
in witnessing it. We saw many very old priests in 
the enormous building, and our guide seemed to know 
all of them; indeed, he seemed to know everybody 
everywhere, and to be universally respected. There 
were certain valuable relics and jewels belonging to the 
cathedral. In order to see these the guide conducted 
us into apartments which seemed to be private, and 
occupied by a considerable number of clericals. The 
guide knew all these men, and they bowed to him re- 
spectfully. . . . Then he took us to the private 
grounds of a count. The gatekeeper saluted our old 
guide with great respect, and, as we strolled about the 
grounds, the guide was at liberty to pick fruits and 
flowers for Adelaide. He next took us to a very old 
church, where we saw a quaint lot of monks. These 
queer men knew our guide, too, and he took snuff with 
one of them who opened a door to what seemed to be 
subterranean vaults of some kind. We walked down 
several long flights of steps, and entered a place where 
thousands of dead bodies were displayed. Many of 
the bodies were in coffins with glass tops or sides, but 
most of them were fastened against the stone walls. 
The guide said the bodies were buried for a year or 
two, and then taken up, and displayed in this queer 
way. There was nothing offensive about the place, 
except as thousands of grinning skulls are offensive. 
The guide did not know how many bodies were dis- 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 449 

played in the place, but I should say the number was 
far above ten thousand. Some of the bodies were of 
infants, some of old men, some of young girls, some of 
priests. I had never before seen anything like it, nor 
did I know any such thing existed in Palermo or else- 
where. . . . Then we went to the royal palace, 
built in 1132, a'nd which is occupied once or twice in a 
decade by the King of Italy and his family. We went 
into the private rooms of the king and queen, and saw 
their beds, and their baths ; we saw the kitchen, and 
dining-room, as well as the state apartments. And 
all the palace attendants were very respectful to our 
old guide ; he was permitted to roam about with us 
without restraint. Once, when he wanted to show us 
a certain apartment, he took a key out of a private 
drawer, and we walked a long way down one of the 
battlements to a tower where the room was. . . . 
But the best thing we saw during the day was the chapel 
of the old palace. It was a wonderful piece of art 
work, the entire interior being covered with valuable 
paintings and more valuable mosaic work. This chapel 
was in the class of the wonders to be seen in India. 
We visited it twice, and both times services were in 
progress. As we had done at the cathedral, the guide 
conducted us among the kneeling worshipers, and he 
knew every priest and monk he encountered, and they 
all spoke to him respectfully. I don't beheve I have 
ever seen anything that attracted me more than this 
chapel, built in the eleventh century. The interior is 
of marble, and the decorations of mosaic work laid in 
designs cut in the marble. . . . At 1 p. m. we 
rested at a little hotel on the side of the mountain over- 



450 TEAVEL LETTERS FROM 

looking Palermo. The old guide knew the proprietor, 
who waited on us himself, and tried hard to give sat- 
isfaction. We had macaroni cooked in Italian style, 
fish, wine, and quite a heartj^ lunch, but the charge 
for four of us — including the guide and driver — was a 
little less than $1.40. Then we went on up the moun- 
tain to a wonderful old church in a wonderful old town, 
the name of which I have forgotten. It was a feast 
day of some kind, and a great celebration was being 
held in the wonderful old town. The streets were 
packed with the merrymakers, and all sorts of hawkers 
were selling all sorts of articles that were queer to us. 
On our way down the mountain we saw a wonderful 
valley devoted to lemon orchards. The owner of one 
of these orchards lived several years in St. Louis, and, 
knowing we were Americans, invited us to see his lemon 
crop. The lemons were just ready to pick, and the 
yield was very good, apparently. The proprietor told 
me he had twelve acres ; that the land was worth $1,000 
an acre; and that all of his lemons were shipped to 
the United States. He was much interested in a rumor 
that the new president, Mr. Wilson, would remove the 
duty on lemons, but I was compelled to confess I did 
not know anything about it. As it was Sunday, all of 
the farmer's family, including his wife and children, 
and hired men followed us about. There were two 
boys in the family, and they climbed trees, and loaded 
Adelaide down with various kinds of fruit. The lemon 
orchard, I noticed, is irrigated, but neither the pro- 
prietor nor the guide could tell me where the water 
came from. Usually it comes from wells, and is raised 
with sweeps turned by donkeys and horses. . . . We 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 451 

returned to the docks at 5 : 10 p. m., after eight very 
delightful hours in Palermo. The boatman was wait- 
ing, and the old guide went aboard with us, carrying 
Adelaide's great collection of fruits and flowers. Dur- 
ing our absence we had taken on six hundred more 
steerage passengers, and their friends surrounded the 
ship, in boats. In half an hour the big ship backed 
out of the harbor, and pointed its nose for New York. 



Monday, May 5. — I think every man believes his 
"luck" is atrocious, and that he rarely gets an "even 
break." But I am perfectly satisfied with what they 
have done to me on the "Canada." It is a new ship 
of fourteen thousand tons, and there are only fifty pas- 
sengers in the first cabin. As a result, we have plenty 
of room, and the officers give us whatever we want. I 
have a room to myself on the best deck, and Adelaide 
has another just like it next door. Between our rooms 
there is a private bath, which has been turned over 
to us for good measure. On most ships the beds are 
hard. On the "Canada," our beds are provided with 
springs, and we have real bedsteads. I have two win- 
dows in my room, and Adelaide has two in hers ; our 
bath-room is as big as a stateroom, and is provided 
with a shower-bath, in addition to the usual tub. . . , 
In the dining-room, we have a table to ourselves; a 
small table for two, with a side electric light, in addi- 
tion to the ceiling lights. On our table twice a day 
are quart bottles of red and white wine, always full. 
This wine is free ; it is a feature of ^11 French boats. 



452 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

The cooking is the best I have ever enjoyed on a steam- 
ship or hotel, and the attendance perfect. Our waiter 
is a Frenchman who speaks almost no English, but the 
chief steward (a German, by-the-way) speaks English, 
and sees that we are not neglected. The meals are 
French, except that we have an English breakfast; 
which means that we have eggs, chops, fish, bacon, 
etc. On the continent, breakfast almost univer- 
sally consists of coffee, bread and butter, and jam. At 
the fine Hotel Vesuve, in Naples, we had this sort of 
breakfast, although we could have eggs if we called for 
them. In Paris it is almost impossible to get anything 
to eat before noon, except at hotels patronized by 
Americans and English. . . . Our rooms are in 
charge of a woman; we see a man in overalls occa- 
sionally, but the woman is in charge. On German 
ships, the dining-room stewards not only care for the 
rooms, but play in the band; on the "Canada," 
waiters in the dining-room have nothing to do with the 
sleeping-rooms. . . . The first-class passengers have 
two big decks. In the rear of the upper deck is a 
handsome smoking-room. At the rear of the next deck 
below, the deck on which our rooms are located, is a 
music-room. At the other end of the deck is a writing- 
room. Just below the writing-room, and reached by a 
grand stairway, is the dining-room. All these rooms 
are very handsome, as the ship is less than a year old. 
. . . What do we pay for all this luxury and mag- 
nificence? Less per day than we paid on the "Maun- 
ganui," between Wellington and Sydney, where I 
shared a room 9x10 with three others. Adelaide 
shared a room of similar siz(i on the "Maunganui" 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 453 

with three other women. The "Maunganui" was a 
favorite; the "Canada" is a new and unknown ship 
strugghng for recognition from the travehng pubhc. 
Moral : Keep away from favorites ; they will always 
impose on you. . . . Another pleasant thing about 
the "Canada" is that there is not a single Englishman 
on board. There is no Sports Committee, no loud 
talk, and no noise. About half the first-cabin passen- 
gers are Americans, and they are so well-behaved that 
I am proud of them. The others are French and Ital- 
ian, and they are also quiet and modest. . . . When 
we look down on the lower decks, we see a seething 
mass of humanity : Italian and Sicihan emigrants. 
Fortunately the weather is fine, and most of them are 
on deck ; only a few of them are seasick. Some peo- 
ple can't go on a millpond without becoming sick, and 
we have a few of this sort in the first cabin. The three 
or four hundred passengers in the second cabin we 
cannot see, as they are on a deck under ours. . . . 
This morning I saw four barbers at work among the 
emigrants ; barbers who are going to the United States 
to work at their trade. The barbers charge four cents 
for shaving, and six cents for hair-cutting. The barber 
in the first cabin charges only fifteen cents for a shave, 
and he is a good workman. The emigrants eat on 
deck, now that the weather is fine. Each one seems 
to get a loaf of bread, and a bucket containing soup 
and meat. A cheap wine is also given them ; also 
macaroni. They are well treated, as the Italian gov- 
ernment has a commissioner on board to look after 
their interests. This commissioner sits on the captain's 
right in the dining-room, and has one of the best rooms 



454 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

on the ship. . . . The emigrants are all poor peo- 
ple, but very wasteful, now that they have plenty. 
Every day enough bread is wasted on their deck to 
feed dozens of people, and this is swept up and thrown 
overboard by the sailors. . . . These emigrants 
are objectionable, in one way. In case of a panic, we 
would all go to the bottom. Nothing could control 
them, and we haven't enough boats to float twenty- 
five hundred people, even if order were maintained. 
But the "Princess Irene," the favorite, is carrying 
even more emigrants than the "Canada." I have 
never before been on a ship where the decks were 
black with emigrants; there are a few hundred on 
nearly every ship, but the crowd on the "Canada" 
frightens me. 



Tuesday, May 6. — The weather remains fine, and 
the sea is as smooth as we found it in the Red Sea, or 
on the east coast of Africa. The Mediterranean nar- 
rows up at its western end, as we approach Gibraltar, 
and becomes a great harbor. At six o'clock this even- 
ing we were within a few hundred yards of the moun- 
tainous coast of Spain. The Mediterranean being nar- 
row at this point, we are seeing many ships: seven 
were in sight at one time this evening. 



Wednesday, May 7. — At 4 : 30 this morning, a 
steward knocked on my door, and said : 
"Gibraltar." 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 455 

I climbed out of bed, hurried into a little clothing, 
and went on deck. Daylight was faintly appearing. 
On the right, two or three hundred yards away, was the 
rock of Gibraltar, where the English have a huge 
fortification which is said to be so old as to be a joke. 
No one is allowed in the fortification, but it is common 
report that the big guns are so old and rusty that it 
would be dangerous to fire them. The rock of Gibral- 
tar is an island, and puts out into the sea. Behind it 
is the town of the same name ; a place as big as Atchi- 
son. The picture of Gibraltar shown in advertise- 
ments of the Prudential Life Insurance Company looks 
exactly like it, except that the bay and town behind 
the rock are not shown accurately. Half-way up the 
rock of Gibraltar was a light, and a long shelf ; I sup- 
pose the shelf is a part of the fortification. In the town 
were occasional clusters of electric lights, as may be 
seen in any modern town just as daylight is appearing, 
and I could see a lighthouse on the African shore off 
to the left. Creeping through the straits were a num- 
ber of ships, one of them within two or three hundred 
feet of the ''Canada." Then I went back to bed. I 
aroused Adelaide, and told her of the sight on the oppo- 
site side of the ship, but she concluded not to get up. 
. . . Soon after breakfast, we passed Tangier, and 
left Africa for good. We have been in sight of Africa 
almost constantly since March 2, when we landed at 
Durban. During the twenty-four days we were on 
the "Burgermeister," we were out of sight of it a few 
days after leaving Port Said, but this morning we saw 
the African continent again, at its northwestern end, 
at Tangier, in Morocco. . . . An hour later, we 



456 TRAVEL LETTEES FROM 

were out of sight of land in the Atlantic ocean, which 
Adelaide had been afraid of, but there was little mo- 
tion, and the weather was warmer and brighter than 
it has been since leaving Port Said. The barber, when 
he shaved me this morning, predicted rough weather 
when we get behind the Azores, but certainly we are 
having beautiful weather now, and have had it con- 
tinuously for thirty-two days. . . . There is an 
American on board who said to me this morning: "I 
shall never travel at sea again. Wherever you go by 
ship, travel is rendered disagreeable by the English. 
The EngHsh are intensely disagreeable to me, and in 
future I shall keep away from them. They are the 
most impolite people in the world, and do not realize 
that everything English is not perfect. They pro- 
nounce words wrong, and regard you with pity if you 
pronounce the same words correctly. The English 
are headed for a big tumble. You and I will not live 
to see it, but Canada and Australia will throw off the 
English yoke. That will encourage India, and Africa, 
and many other countries, to do the same thing. Eng- 
land is seeing its best days right now ; let the English- 
men swagger while they may. The Enghsh remind 
me of a big trust : they paid too much for their various 
possessions, and are bound to 'bust.' " . . . I do 
not feel that bad about the English, but I certainly re- 
mark that the "Canada" is much quieter than it would 
be were a majority of the passengers sons of John Bull. 
So far, I have not seen a single passenger running 
around in pajamas. 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 457 

Thursday, May 8. — Our magnificent French cook 
had macaroni for dinner today, and, while I Uked it 
better than the Itahan way of preparing it, I did not 
hke it so well as the American way. Italian macaroni 
did not please my taste. It was not cooked enough, 
to begin with, and had the tomato sauce baked into 
it. It is a sight to see Italians eat macaroni. It is 
cooked in long strings, and the Italians poke it into 
their mouths in a fashion that is not at all pleasing. 
. . . Six whales were in sight at one time this after- 
noon, and probably there were many more in the school 
we did not see. An hour later, we ran into the biggest 
lot of porpoises I have ever seen. They were quite 
close to the ship, on both sides of it, and seemed to be 
following us. A porpoise looks like a fish weighing 
twenty-five to forty pounds, and leaps entirely out of 
the water when in a sportive mood. Jumping out of 
the water is probably a fish's method of taking a bath. 
. . . We have our chairs on the upper or hurricane 
deck, and, when we take a walk, pass the wireless room, 
where an operator sits all day and night with receivers 
at his ears, to catch any call that may be in the air. 
When the operator reads, he has the receivers fastened 
to his ears, and I have seen him eating dinner in his 
room when rigged up in the same queer way. . . . 
A dove has been following the ship several days. It 
is very tired, and this morning I saw it attempt to 
fight on the waves; then it fluttered up into the rig- 
ging, and rested there awhile. . . . Near the en- 
trance to the dining-room there is a notice in French 
and English. Among other things, it says the man- 
agement will appreciate the courtesy if passengers 



458 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

dress for luncheon and dinner. We are wondering 
what a proper dress for luncheon is. The rules also 
say that dogs are not allowed on board, but one has 
the run of the ship ; and, since he is the only nuisance 
on board, we wonder that the officers stand for it. I 
never cared much for those who go crazy about dogs. 
Senator Vest, of Missouri, once wrote a false and senti- 
mental tribute to dogs, and the Dog People were so 
much encouraged by it that they are very pronounced 
nuisances everywhere. No one has a right to keep a 
dog that is a nuisance to others; whoever does not 
know this is unfair and impolite in other ways. . . . 
The big ship "Canada" is doing a very fair job of 
pitching this afternoon, but we have been at sea so 
long that we do not mind it. There is a noticeable 
thinning-out on the steerage deck. So far, we have 
been at sea fifty-three days since leaving San Fran- 
cisco, and have been seasick only four or five days. 
We were sick three days on the Pacific, and two between 
Australia and New Zealand, but during the last forty- 
seven days at sea we have experienced no inconvenience. 
I sleep at night as I never slept before in my life; 
there is just enough motion to rock me to sleep. . . . 
In Italy, a traveler from the United States wonders at 
the general use of wine. All classes drink it, and it is 
very cheap ; I bought a bottle of very good wine in 
Naples for six cents. The poor people use it instead 
of gravy or milk ; on the ship, I see emigrants soaking 
their bread in wine. Every vacant plot of ground in 
Naples is devoted to grapes and vegetables. In the 
heart of the town, wherever you find a vacant lot, you 
find a garden. I have never seen anything growing in 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 459 

Italy except vegetables and fruit ; I wonder where the 
wheat comes from with which they make macaroni? 
The Italians say American flour makes better bread 
than the Itahan flour, but inferior macaroni. The 
Itahans are poor, as a rule, but nearly all of them are 
fat ; particularly the women. The poor people of It- 
aly do not eat meat once a week ; the Italian emigrants 
on the ship get it twice a day. But they are very waste- 
ful of it, and complain as much as though they had 
always been accustomed to the very best. One of the 
ofiicers says that on the last trip, the ship was compelled 
to bring back twenty-two emigrants who failed to pass 
the examination in New York. The charge against 
one man was that he had been a professional beggar. 
This man made a great deal of trouble during the voy- 
age to New York; he was always finding fault with 
the food, although it was abundant. I asked the officer 
why the ship gave the emigrants so much food that 
they threw it overboard ; his reply was that the Italian 
commissioner on board insisted on a liberal supply, 
and the captain was at his mercy. The emigrants are 
pretty well crowded in their sleeping quarters; one 
hundred and fifty men sleep in one room, in a bed 
which runs up in broad tiers. If the owners of the 
English ships running between Australia and New Zea- 
land ever hear of this, they will die of mortification 
because of their moderation in putting only four in a 
room. . . . We had a moving-picture show last 
night, with the explanatory lecture in French. . . . 
The barber who shaves me every morning says he has 
been going to sea a good many years, but never started 
on a voyage on Friday; that a ship never leaves its 



460 TRAVEL LETTERS EROM 

initial port on Friday. The barber is mistaken. For 
thirty years or more, the P. & 0. line has sent a ship 
out of London every Friday. Nine-tenths of all you 
hear is untrue. The barber also says that the famous 
expression, ''See Naples and die," is founded on a 
play on words. In the bay of Naples there is an island 
called Morreai, which in Italian, means something con- 
nected with death. The original saying was, "See 
Naples and Morreai," but in a spirit of levity the Eng- 
lish translated the saying, "See Naples and die." 



Friday, May 9. — This afternoon we passed the 
^"Lusiana," an Italian emigrant ship also bound for 
New York. The "Lusiana" left Naples a day before 
we did, but it is slow, and we overhauled it. We passed 
it within a hundred yards, and marveled at the manner 
in which it pitched and rolled; probably the big 
"Canada" was cutting up in a similar manner, viewed 
from the decks of the "Lusiana," which were black 
with emigrants. The emigrants did a good deal of 
cheering as we passed. . . . The "Canada" is also 
a faster ship than the "Princess Irene," the favorite, 
and we are hoping that we may overtake it, and jeer 
at the passengers. The "Princess Irene" had a start 
of nearly twenty-four hours, as it did not stop at Pa- 
lermo. . . . By-the-way, as we left the " Lusiana" 
behind, I caught the geographies in a ridiculous error. 
They all say that at sea, the last sight of a disappearing 
vessel is the top of its masts ; which proves, the geog- 
raphies say, that the world is round. The curvature 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 461 

of the earth is something Uke an inch to the mile, so 
that the funnels of a ship would not disappear under 
five hundred miles, if one could see that far. Three 
hours after we passed the "Lusiana," it was a mere 
speck on the horizon, but we could plainly see its hull. 
After it had entirely disappeared from view by the 
naked eye, we could see its hull with the aid of glasses. 
The ships were probably fifteen miles apart when we 
finally lost sight of the "Lusiana, " and the difference 
between them, in the curvature of the earth, did not 
exceed fifteen inches. . . . The hull of the "Canada" 
is white, and it must have presented a very pretty 
sight to the passengers on the "Lusiana," who were all 
of one class: emigrants. But down below, the "Can- 
ada" is probably a httle untidy. Everything below 
its two top decks is crowded with emigrants, and they 
are not very clean. In the evening, they sing a great 
deal ; a trombone-player, en route to New York to 
join an Italian band, leads with his instrument. Among 
the first-class passengers is an Itahan opera-singer who 
is about as good as any of the second-rate tenors at 
the Metropolitan Opera House, and he sings every 
evening. . . . Nearly all the emigrants seem to 
wear home-made socks and shoes. Most of them are 
young men ; I doubt if there are two hundred women 
in the entire lot. Many of them have been over be- 
fore, and will return home when outdoor work ceases 
next winter, as the price of the passage is only $25. 
The weather is chilly, and the emigrants sit on deck 
wrapped in blankets furnished them by the steamship 
company. In addition to a blanket, each is given a 
sack stuffed with straw, and on these they sleep. 



462 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

Nearly all of them eat in groups on deck, and this 
morning I saw them pouring olive oil into tin cups 
containing either coffee and bread, or wine and bread, 
I could not tell which. ... I write this at a table 
in a little alcove on deck, and the screaming of the 
emigrants as they excitedly talk to each other amounts 
to a roar. This noise is in my ears continuously, ex- 
cept when I go to my room, which is amidships, and 
far removed from the emigrant decks forward and aft. 
. . . The cooking on the ship continues to astonish 
us, it is so excellent. So far, we have not had a dish 
duplicated at lunch or dinner. You would think any- 
one could scramble eggs; it may be difficult to un- 
scramble them, as the late J. P. Morgan once observed, 
but there should be little difference in the process of 
scrambling them. I am fond of scrambled eggs, and 
have been eating them all my life, but the manner in 
which they are prepared in the "Canada's" kitchen is 
new and delightful. This morning I asked the chief 
steward to take Adelaide into the kitchen, to learn 
the chef's secret of scrambling eggs. Adelaide says 
one secret of his delicious cooking is that everything 
is reeking in butter. It is possible that a German or 
English crew would suit me better than the French 
crew of the "Canada," when it comes to the general 
work of the ship, but the kitchen and dining-room, and 
sleeping-rooms, are better managed on this ship than 
on any other with which I have been familiar on two 
voyages around the world, and three shorter trips by 
sea. I do not want any better accommodations than 
I have on the "Canada." . . . Much as I admire 
the Germans, I cannot help noting that their language 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 463 

does not sound as well as French or Italian. To a 
man who does not understand languages, the German 
sounds worst of all, unless it is the Russian. On the 
"Burgermeister," where we heard German constantly 
for more than three weeks, we used to laugh at its 
funny sounds. I know of no uglier sounding word than 
the German word "yaw," which means ''yes." If I 
were a young man, and should propose to a young and 
beautiful German girl, and she should reply with what 
poets say is the sweetest of all words, yaw, I should 
feel disposed to run away to South America, or South 
Africa, or some other country where it is too hot. . . . 
I have never known anyone to struggle quite so hard 
against baldness as the barber on the "Canada." 
When his hair is in order, it looks all right, but the 
other morning, while I was being shaved, the window 
blew open, and the barber's hair went to pieces. He 
is bald, but has cultivated a lot of long hair on the side 
of his head which he combs over his baldness. The 
wind threw this long hair out of place, and as it flapped 
around, the barber was as flustrated as an old maid 
suddenly discovered in her night-gown. . . . Speak- 
ing of the barber reminds me that he says all the officers 
of the "Canada," except the captain, wanted more pay, 
a few months ago, and walked out just before the ship 
was to sail from Marseilles. The ship had a big lot 
of passengers aboard, but the general manager was 
stubborn, and he fooled around for a week before he 
could find another set of officers. . . . We hear on 
the upper deck that the six hundred Sicilians among 
the emigrants are not as good workers as the fourteen 
hundred Italians; and that in addition to being 



464 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

lazy, the Sicilians use a knife with very little provoca- 
tion. In Sicily, you hear a great deal of the vendetta, 
wherein a man will knife another man who is a second 
cousin to an enemy. . . . This morning we passed 
the Azore islands, where Columbus stopped on his 
famous voyage. Usually the "Canada" passes be- 
tween the islands, and quite close to shore, but owing 
to rain and mist we passed on the longer and safer 
course. 



Saturday, May 10. — It turned out just as the 
barber predicted : Behind the Azores we encountered 
rough seas, and the big ship "Canada" has been jump- 
ing today like a greyhound. The wind is blowing 
heavily, and there is an occasional shower of rain. Af- 
ter every shower, there is a rainbow ; one of them made 
a bow over the stern of the ship, and followed us for 
fifteen minutes. We were late for breakfast this morn- 
ing, but the steward said we were the first ones in, and 
no others came while we were there. We have suffered 
no inconvenience from the rough weather, except that 
we became tired of bracing ourselves. The sailors 
dislike rough weather; they do not become seasick, 
but rough weather at sea is disagreeable, as it is on 
land, and results in gloomy thoughts and bad tempers. 
Rough weather rolls you about in your bed at night, 
and the most experienced sailor cannot sleep as well as 
he can when the weather is good. ... I have fre- 
quently mentioned the barber. On every ship, the 
barber-shop is headquarters for news. In the days 
before newspapers, people went to the barber-shops 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 465 

for the gossip of the day. The "Canada's" barber is 
a German, but speaks French and Enghsh. He Hved 
in London four years, and told me today that he found, 
after learning English in London, that Americans could 
not understand him very well. Which corroborates 
my statement that the people of the United States and 
the English do not speak the same language. . . . 
The man on the "Canada" who has least to do is the 
barkeeper. I have not seen a single drink ordered in 
the dining-room. On the "Burgermeister," nearly ev- 
eryone ordered something from the bar at luncheon 
and dinner, and paid extra for it, but on the "Canada," 
two kinds of wine are furnished free. The profit from 
liquor on the German ship must have been enormous. 
Two kinds of keg beer, light and dark, were sold, and 
nearly everybody drank one or the other. The weather 
was very warm nearly all the time I was on the "Bur- 
germeister," and the cold beer was particularly agree- 
able. But on the "Canada," I have not seen the bar- 
keeper fill a half-dozen orders. The weather is chilly, 
and we wear our heaviest winter clothing; besides, 
there is no German beer on draught. . . . This is 
the sixth day out, and we have had strawberries every 
day. It is surprising how fresh and palatable the cook 
manages to make everything taste. We are paying 
about seven dollars a day each for our accommodations 
on this ship, which include two rooms on the best deck, 
a private bath, three of the best meals I have ever 
eaten, and bouillon at 11 a. m., and tea at 4 p. m. We 
would be charged about the same price in the second 
class on the big Atlantic liners. The "Canada" is a 
new ship, working for a reputation; that is the only 



466 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

explanation I know of. Anyone going abroad, by tak- 
ing this line, sees Palermo, in Sicily, and Naples, in 
Italy, on the way, landing finally at Marseilles, in 
France. Some of the other ships of the line stop at 
Lisbon, in Portugal, and at the Azores, also. . . *. 
You can pay almost any price for accommodations at 
sea. It is said John Jacob Astor paid $5,000 for ac- 
commodations on the "Titanic," and the management 
didn't do a thing but drown him. He had three or 
four rooms, two baths, a private dining-room, etc. 
Speaking of J. J. Astor reminds me that he made finan- 
cial mistakes, as well as the rest of us. In closing up 
his estate it was found that he had ten million dollars 
worth of securities which were practically worthless. 
But Astor could drive a hard bargain, on occasion. 
He once found a man who was hard up, and who wanted 
to sell a yacht which cost half a million dollars. The 
yacht was new, and the man thought he ought to have 
$450,000 for it. But Astor finally got it for $90,000. 
, , . There is a man on board who is the best news- 
paper scholar I have ever known. He is familiar with 
everything that has appeared in the newspapers for the 
past twenty or thirty years. I have posted myself on 
the news of the past five months by talking to him. He 
is very entertaining, and quite modest ; he frequently 
says : "I know nothing about it myself; I only know 
what I read in the newspapers." I have never before 
known a man quite like him. . . . We have dinner 
at 6:30 on the "Canada," but the passengers never 
come into the dining-room until a quarter of an hour 
later, when the table d'hote dinner begins. At the 
fine Hotel Vesuve, in Naples, the dinner hour was 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 467 

7 : 30, but the guests were always a quarter of an hour 
late. . . . Our guide in Naples was a rather sullen 
American, and we learned today that he was formerly 
a very rich man. His father died seven years ago, and 
left him a fortune, but he ran through with it, and is 
now a guide, at S2 a day. He spent most of his money 
in Monte Carlo, at the gambling-tables. This informa- 
tion I get from the newspaper scholar, quoted above, 
who is an old traveler. He says he knows the guide 
well, but refused to give me his name. I have the 
guide's card, but the newspaper scholar says it is not 
his real name. 



Sunday, May 11. — The bad weather continues, and 
we cannot take our usual walks. We sit in a protected 
place on the upper deck, wrapped in rugs, and talk 
about getting home. Adelaide has decided that she 
does not care to remain in New York long; that she 
wants to get home as soon as possible ; so if we reach 
that city Thursday night, as expected, Friday after- 
noon will see us on a railroad train headed westward. 
. , . While on the Pacific ocean, I met a life insur- 
ance man named Adams, who told me that he traveled 
constantly, and that his expenses, afloat and ashore, 
averaged $11 a day. He kept no expense account, he 
said ; at the end of the year he charged the company 
$11 a day for expenses, and that was almost exactly 
what he spent. Today I made a calculation, and 
found that the present trip has cost us $11 a day each, 
almost to a penny. So if you want to know what 
traveling costs, here is an estimate you may depend 



468 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

upon. This means rapid traveling, by railroad and 
steamship, and sightseeing in the towns with the as- 
sistance of a guide. The estimate includes the pur- 
chases a traveler is compelled to make, and cannot be 
reduced much unless you travel second class, and deny 
yourself many things. At Palermo, we hired a guide, 
and drove about nearly all day in a new two-horse 
carriage, with liveried driver. The expense was con- 
siderable, but we saw dozens of things that those who 
did not take a guide and carriage, failed to see. . . . 
A stewardess on the ''Canada" has enormous feet. 
She is rather a pretty woman, but her feet are much 
too big. Americans have smaller feet than any other 
race. . . . There is a young man on board who 
has a tremendous lot of hair, which he never combs. 
There is something peculiar about him, and today we 
found out what it is : he is an artist. . . . There 
is a woman on board who left New York in February, 
a bride. She said to me today: "I'm not happy; 
but I'm as happy as married women usually are, and 
am content." I've been thinking about the statement, 
and have almost concluded that she is a smart woman. 
Isn't she smarter than the woman who marries, ex- 
pects to be happy, is disappointed, and becomes sour 
over her disappointment? ... I see that Edward 
Bok, editor of the Ladies^ Home Journal, is offering 
prizes to husbands who will write the best articles 
under this title : "Why I Wanted My Wife to Become 
My Wife." The prize articles will be written by senti- 
mentalists who will write, not the truth, but what the 
editor wants. The husbands who know the truth 
about marriage, rarely tell it. . - . . A man on 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 469 

board is a great reader, and gets a new book out of the 
library every day. He sits near me on deck, and fre- 
quently criticises the authors of the books he reads. 
Still, it is easier to be a great critic than it is to be a 
great author. . . . This man knows many things 
I never heard of. He says he once knew a boy only 
seven years old who was an ordained preacher in the 
Methodist church. I knew better, but I did not argue 
with him. I've quit arguing ; I hear foolish statements 
every day without contradicting them. In the smok- 
ing-room today I heard a man say that a cardinal in 
the Roman Catholic Church need not be a priest, and 
that a cardinal might marry if he chose. Another man 
said Mark Twain was once a preacher, and had a reg- 
ular charge. 



Monday, May 12. — This has been the most disa- 
greeable day of the voyage. The wind blew a hurricane, 
but shifted so frequently that it kept the sea down, 
although it was so bad that most of the passengers 
were ill. The captain, when he came down to break- 
fast, said to the few present: "I'm sorry." Meaning 
the weather ; he had promised us a fine voyage. The 
captain is a very polite man ; when he comes into the 
dining-room, in the morning, he speaks to most of the 
passengers, and goes about to shake hands with some 
of them. He is very solicitous of those who are ill, 
but Captain Trask, of the American ship ''Sonoma," 
thought it a disgrace to be seasick, and would barely 
speak to any of his passengers so afflicted. He used to 
say he was never seasick in his life, and that seasick- 



470 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

ness was "just a notion." , . Adelaide, the farmer's 
daughter, does not mind the terrific motion of the ship, 
but I have a sRght headache, and do not care to eat 
much. , . . The barber says conditions down 
among the emigrants are bad. Most of them are in 
bed, in rooms containing hundreds. All the married 
couples occupy one large room, and sleep in their 
clothes. The unmarried women occupy another large 
room, and the unmarried men another. There are 
tables down below, where the emigrants may eat their 
food, but they eat on deck when the weather will per- 
mit. For breakfast they are given a soup thick with 
vegetables, and coffee ; for dinner and supper they have 
boiled meat, potatoes, macaroni, onions, wine, and 
bread. They are given so much to eat that we all 
note the manner in which they waste it. . . . Dur- 
ing the worst of the storm today, a large woman sitting 
on deck attempted to go below. She foolishly at- 
tempted to descend an open stairway, and the wind 
blew her skirts over her head. This rendered her hys- 
terical, and she began screaming. Seven stewards were 
required to carry her to her room, from which retreat 
she sends word on deck that she is so humiliated that 
we will not see her again. . . . Owing to the 
storm, our run was cut down to 368 miles today. The 
storm seemed very serious to us, but on the log, the 
ofl&cers described it simply as: "Rough sea; north- 
west gale." 



Tuesday, May 13. — At 10 o'clock this morning we 
ran into a smooth sea, and the sun struggled out. By 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 471 

11 A. M. all the emigrants were on deck, chattering as 
usual. . . . The chief steward gave us declaration 
blanks at breakfast ; which means we are nearing New 
York. . . . We are in communication today with 
five other steamships, and Cape Race. The cost of a 
wireless message of ten words to the United States is 
marked on the bulletin board as $3.80. . . . Every 
day of the voyage we have had a different fish for din- 
ner ; apparently as fresh as when caught. I shall long 
remember the King fish as the best of the lot. The 
butter is also surprisingly fresh, considering the fact 
that no farmers can come in with a fresh supply. I 
shall always remember my voyage on the "Canada" 
as the most endurable I have ever made ; and in my 
time I have been a passenger on two dozen different 
ships. The passengers are quiet and polite, and there 
has been no talk of Sports ; no games of any kind are 
played, and it has been an ideal voyage in all respects, 
except two days of bad weather. . . . The barber, 
a German, intends to quit. He says he likes the 
French crew ; that he gets along better with them than 
he got along with his own countrymen on some boats, 
but he is not earning as much as he thinks he should. 
A small passenger list is pleasant for the passengers, 
but disastrous to the ship's employees. . . . We 
had artichokes for dinner today. I wonder where the 
idea originated that they are good to eat? They seem 
to be very popular in Italy; I saw great stacks of 
them in Naples and Palermo. . . . One of the 
women passengers appeared at dinner tonight wearing 
an automobile bonnet and gauntlet gloves. I do not 
bother myself much about taste in women's dress, but 



472 TRAVEL LETTERS PROM 

that shocked me. Another woman passenger is too 
ill to appear, in the dining-room for her meals, but is 
able to sit in the smoking-room every evening, and 
puff cigarettes. I'll never become accustomed to 
women smoking. . . . The young man who paints 
pictures in oil, and who has a shock of hair which he 
never combs, is extremely good-natured. Which means 
that he can't paint much. A genius is always cross 
and impolite. . . . The emigrants are not allowed 
to buy beer, so those in the second cabin buy it, and 
hand it over to the emigrants. I cannot see much dif- 
ference between the passengers in the second cabin 
and the emigrants. Many of the second-cabin passen- 
gers have friends among the emigrants, and visit them 
a good deal. Two of the second-cabin passengers are 
young French girls, accompanied by their mother. We 
hear they are going to the United States to get rich 
husbands. The opinion prevails abroad that America 
is full of rich men who will take nearly anything in 
the way of a wife. It is a mistake. America has more 
attractive girls than any other country, and half of 
them are compelled to get jobs. . . . The Ameri- 
cans in the first cabin live mainly in New York and 
Boston ; we are the only Westerners. . . . One of 
the passengers in the first cabin is a woman with two 
children. She has perfect manners, and is no doubt a 
good woman, but I have somehow got the notion that 
her husband doesn't appreciate her at her true value. 
The other women say she is All Soul, but probably her 
husband thinks that is the trouble with her; I never 
knew a spiritual woman to please any man except her 
pastor. I am satisfied that within, a few hours after 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 473 

her arrival home, she will say to her husband: "I 
would like to have a private talk with you." 



Wednesday, May 14. — The man who intends to 
quit traveling because he meets so many disagreeable 
Englishmen, said to me today : "An Englishman is as 
crazy to know everything that is going on as a young 
Jew traveling-man. And what annoys me is that the 
Americans submit tamely to criticism from the Eng- 
lish. Every day you see English criticism of Ameri- 
cans in books and newspapers, but the Americans never 
strike back. It isn't true that Americans attract at- 
tention abroad because of their rudeness ; nine-tenths 
of the charges made against American travelers are in- 
vented by the English. Ask any American who has 
traveled, and you will find he dislikes the English. The 
English do not like Americans, and Americans might 
as well throw off their reserve, and admit that they do 
not like the English." . . . The captain said this 
afternoon that the "Princess Irene," the favorite, is 
only twelve miles ahead of us, and that we shall prob- 
ably pass it tomorrow night. . . . About sunset, 
there was great cheering on the steerage deck. Some 
one had reported land in sight, but the report proved 
untrue. . . . There is a very fat Italian woman 
in the first cabin, and she has a very fat daughter. 
Her husband is a passenger in the second cabin. 



474 TRAVEL LETTERS FROM 

Thursday, May 15. — At the Captain's Dinner this 
evening, free champagne was served, in addition to 
the two kinds of wine we have had free twice a day 
since leaving Naples. The captain, whose name is 
Bouleuc, made a speech in broken English. Sometime 
tonight we shall reach New York, and cast anchor un- 
til daylight, when the doctor, customs officers and im- 
migration officers will come on board to see if they can 
find anything suspicious. . . . People are as proud 
of ability to speak French as they are proud of art or 
musical culture. I know an American woman on 
board who has been reading French books all the way 
from Naples; yet she confessed to me that she knows 
very little French. She simply wanted the reputation 
(^vhich she did not deserve) of being a French scholar. 
An American man whom I know very well; sharply 
criticises the French of a woman who sits at the cap- 
tain's table, and who talks constantly and volubly in 
French with the captain. Yet the man confessed to 
me that he knows only enough French to "get along." 
. . . We thought of remaining up until we could 
see the lights of New York, but abandoned the idea 
at 9 : 30, and went to bed. 



Friday, May 16. — When I awoke this morning, 
the "Canada" was lying off Sandy Hook, in company 
with eight other ships that had arrived during the night, 
and were waiting for the port officers. Among the 
ships was the "Princess Irene," the Favorite. It had 



NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA, AND AFRICA. 475 

a start of twenty-four hours, as it did not stop at Pa- 
lermo, but we arrived as soon as it did. . . . We 
landed at 10 a. m., and greatly admired every man, 
woman, child and building we saw. The first thing 
we did was to make a dash for the Pennsylvania Sta- 
tion, where we arranged to leave for Home at 5 p. m. 
. . . What a wonderful building the Pennsylvania 
Station is! Nothing else like it in the world; except 
a few blocks away, where may be found the New York 
Central Station, which is still finer. ... I showed 
Adelaide as much of New York as I could from 10 
A. M. to 5 p. M. In Johannesburg, we paid fifteen 
cents street-car fare each to the zoological gardens. 
In New York, we went three or four times the distance 
for five cents, on the way passing under a great river. 
This is some of the Robbery to which we Americans 
are compelled to submit. . . , When we wanted a 
lunch, we went into a beautiful place, and paid sixty- 
five cents for all two healthy Americans cared to eat. 
This in wicked, extravagant New York. . . . Some 
of the buildings we saw were thirty-eight stories high, 
and the streets through which we passed cannot be 
duplicated anywhere. . . . We wanted a guide to 
show us about quickly. We secured a bright young 
man from the Postal Telegraph Co. He was polite, 
intelligent and capable. What do you suppose this 
Robber Corporation charged us for his services? 
Thirty cents an hour. , , . Soon after we left the 
Pennsylvania Station, our train passed under the Hud- 
son river, and emerged in New Jersey. This state is 
not a fair sample of the country in which we live, but 



476 TRAVEL LETTERS. 

how we enjoyed seeing it! The green at Home is a 
healthier and better-looking green than the green in 
the tropics. 



Saturday, May 17. — We have spent this day pass- 
ing through Ohio and Indiana. They are better states 
than New Jersey, and our enthusiasm is increasing. 
We are passengers on an all-steel train, and in no other 
country in the world are equally good railroad accom- 
modations to be had. . . . Early in the afternoon, 
nearly a thousand miles from the sea, we came to the 
fourth or fifth city of the world : Chicago. An Amer- 
ican we saw last in New Zealand, Dr. Beeson, met us 
at this place. Our social relations are rapidly im- 
proving. 



Sunday, May 18. — This morning, when the conduc- 
tor came in to take my tickets, he said : 

"Why, hello!" 

I knew him : we were getting almost in sight of 
Home. When we went into the dining-car, the negro 
waiter spoke to us by name. . . . Shortly after- 
wards, the conductor sat down beside us, and, looking 
out of the south window, said : 

"I never knew before you could see Potato Hill so 
plainly from this side of the river." 

Then the Pullman conductor came in, and said : 

"The next station is Atchison." 



:p 'I Vsim 



